Volvo presents truck as designed in the country to harvest cane

MARINGÁ-manufacturer of trucks and buses Volvo, with factory in Curitiba (PR), presented yesterday a truck as developed in the country, with the help of Swedish array, especially for use in the harvesting of sugarcane. The automation system was applied in a vehicle for sale in the Brazilian market, semipesado VM, already equipped with several technological items. The company estimates that commercial production become feasible in up to three years.
The VM As uses similar systems to adopted vehicles Volvo tests since last year in coal mines in Sweden and, more recently, on garbage collection. Levels of autonomy is that vary according to the global Director of Volvo''s Swedish automation, Hayden Wokil. The Brazilian truck needs a driver to take you to the planting area where sugar cane cut by harvesters. Once on line planting, the service is done without human interference.
The advantage, explains the President of Volvo Latin America, Wilson Lirmann, is the reduction of losses in the process, which can reach 20% of the harvest. According to him, the project began just when a big client of the automaker, the Santa Terezinha, third largest exporter of sugar from Brazil, sought the company to study alternatives to reduce this type of prejudice.
The 10 units of the group, all in Paraná, process 18 million tons of sugarcane per year. "Every five years, lost on average a harvest when we operate with vehicles without any Automation," said Paul Mark, ceo of grupo Santa Terezinha, also known as Usaçúcar.
The main loss occurs when the truck that picks up the withdrawal by cane Harvester passes over the seedlings following harvest. Another problem is the stomping ground becomes increasingly compressed, which reduces your productivity.
The truck as you can follow the circuit without trampling on the planted area, at constant speed, day and night.
The vehicle has been tested for two years and has two GPS antennas and sensors in different parts. The system adopted is the RTK, making real-time positioning correction. For operating in restricted area, the vehicle detection sensors waiver of people and objects.
Based on the Santa Terezinha, if your entire fleet of 400 trucks used at harvest (or transhipment) were autonomous, the annual savings would be about R $50,000,000, Bernardo Fedalto, commercial Director of Volvo.
According to Lirmann, the consumer can purchase a '' kit '' for adapting the VM trucks for basic automation. The normal vehicle used in this operation costs about R $250,000. The price in the standalone version is not set. "What I can tell is that the system (not including the vehicle) is going to pay a little more than a year."
Legislation. As the VM will be used only in restricted area, there is no need for legislation, as occurs in case of use on public streets and roads. He receives the cane cut and transfers it to the large trucks that make the external transport to the processing plant.
Wokil says that, overall, companies work with the Governments to a single law that, in the future, autonomous vehicles can travel in all countries with the same specifications.
According to Lirmann, prior to the sale, Volvo will launch this year a service system that informs the coordinates so that the driver will remain on the path where no planting. The investment in this system, as well as in VM, is included in the R $1 billion plan that the group will apply in Latin America between 2017 and 2019. It is also integrated into the overall plan for the development of new technologies.
Mark, of Santa Terezinha, says it plans to acquire autonomous vehicles to the extent that you need to renew your fleet, but that will also depend on the availability of financing lines. "Today, for example, banks are restrictive and no viable credit". The Group employs 17500 employees. The plant produces sugar only for export and, in 2016, recorded an increase of 25.6% on foreign sales.
Other truck manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, MAN and Scania, are also testing trucks, but out of the country.