Aerial photo of the live demonstration of Beidahuang Jiansanjiang - Country Garden unmanned farm project on Oct 11 [Photo/hljnews.cn]

The Jiansanjiang Agricultural Reclamation Administration affiliated to Beidahuang Group, a front-runner of the country’s modern agriculture, has cooperated with Country Garden, one of the world’s 500 largest public companies, to roll out an unmanned farm pilot demonstration project. The two sides held a live demonstration of unmanned farm machinery operation on Oct 11 in Jiangsanjiang Qixing Farm in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province.　　

It is the largest unmanned farm project for staple food grains at home and abroad, with the most agricultural machinery and equipment involved, the most complete operation steps, the most advanced unmanned technology, and the highest degree of unmanned field work, said Luo Xiwen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor of South China Agricultural University.

Luo added that at nearly 7,000,000 square meters it is also the largest unmanned farm pilot demonstration project in the world.

Two “Dongfanghong” (or Oriental Red) unmanned tractors developed by YTO Group Corporation (YTO), a subsidiary of Sinomach and a leading enterprise in China’s agricultural machinery, debuted at the live demonstration, and completed the first full cycle of unmanned farming operations, contributing to the construction of the world’s first unmanned farm.

The event was the world’s first concentrated display of advanced intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment undertaking the whole process of unmanned operation of main crops. It was also the second time that YTO had been invited to participate in the on-site demonstration after its debut in the first unmanned operation test of the agricultural project in June this year.

In the previous test, Dongfanghong high-horsepower unmanned tractors developed by YTO stood out from well-known international agricultural machinery products, especially in dry field sowing, paddy field beating and flat ground operations. It was the only brand that met the overall requirements and completed all the specified agricultural operations.

"In addition to a high-powered tractor, we also put a newly developed heavy-duty tractor on display this time," a company executive said.

The two Dongfanghong tractors participated in path planning and tracking as well as self-steering. Making only small errors, the high quality tractors, the accuracy of which has been greatly improved, compared well with the human-driven ones and were rated by experts as having the most stable performance of all unmanned vehicles in the demonstration.