Russia’s Agriculture Ministry Makes Autonomous Tractors and Robots a Priority for Farm Machinery
Agriculture Minister Oksana Lut and Industry Minister Anton Alikhanov held a meeting with agricultural machinery manufacturers on the development of farm equipment, making autonomous machines one of the priorities.
Stavropol State Agrarian University and the National Institute of Automotive Engineering (NAMI) are already developing highly automated tractors and robotic platforms for orchards and field farming. The equipment will be able to operate in the field without direct human involvement. To test autonomous machines, authorities plan to create a network of testing sites at state agricultural machinery testing stations and training farms run by agricultural universities. There, the machines will undergo not only technical tests but also trials under real production conditions.
The tests will cover different climate zones and crop types to provide a complete picture of the technology's effectiveness. Farmers will ultimately get reliable data on how suitable a particular system is for their operations and what economic benefits it can deliver.
Alongside autonomous systems, priorities include switching to natural-gas-powered equipment and hybrid tractors, as well as developing new types of machinery that currently have no Russian equivalents.
