Sabanto

Sabanto offers autonomous farming operations as a service. This means you can’t buy their technology, but you can hire them to do planting, tine weeding, rotary hoeing, cultivating and vertical tillage on your fields.

What is the most striking according to the supplier?
We have built a fleet of 60 and 90 hp autonomous tractors and have planted, tine weeded, cultivated, and performed tillage throughout US states Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. The systems are deployed in multiple fields, on multiple farms, across multiple states and are monitored by our staff hundreds of miles away.

How does the robot tractor with your system navigate and plan its work and paths?
Given the path boundary, fuel and seed capacity and other agronomic constraints, we process the path and any other settings in the cloud and download said path to the remote system. Once verified, the system is initiated remotely. The system continually monitors its own performance and detects any anomalies. Additionally, the data is streamed back to our ‘mission control’, monitored by our staff.

How are implements operated and controlled by your system?
We closely monitor the performance and status of the attached implement and add appropriate sensors to the implement to detect anomalies.

What are the safety features?
We use a safety system to detect obstacles and closely monitor the health of both tractor and implement. We also have front and backwards facing cameras streaming these live video streams on the system.

What kind of work can your system do autonomously?
We are capable of and have demonstrated countless acres of planting, tine weeding, rotary hoeing, cultivating and vertical tillage.

Can you switch off autonomous mode and continue as a manned tractor for difficult work/circumstances?
Yes, we most certainly can. All our tractors are capable of being used in a manner that they were intended to be used for.

How many systems are currently in the field and where?
We were founded in October 2018 and have an extensive ‘farming as a service’ fleet situated across the Midwest in the US.

What is the cost price per ha compared with a manned tractor?
Our cost to perform a field operation is considerably less than the status quo used in row-crop agriculture across the US. Pricing however is laregely dependent upon service provided, location and number of acres requested.