Claus G Sørensen

• PhD
• Professor at Aarhus University

Agriculture is being transformed through automation and robotics to improve efficiency and reduce production costs. However, this transformation poses risks of job loss, particularly for low-skilled workers, as automation decreases the need for human labor. To adapt, the workforce must acquire new qualifications to collaborate with automated system...

The integration of agricultural robots in precision farming plays a pivotal role in tackling the pressing demands of minimizing energy usage, enhancing productivity, and maximizing crop yield to meet the needs of an expanding global population and depleting non-renewable resources. Evaluating the energy expenditure is vital when assessing agricultu...

Navigation systems are widely used in precision agriculture to improve efficiencies and yields. These systems guide agricultural machines to follow waylines calculated based on specific traffic patterns, including straight and curved waylines. While generating straight waylines is relatively straightforward, generating curved waylines presents chal...

Purpose of Review: To summarize the state of the art of robotic systems in agriculture through the prism of a wide range of reflections associated with health, safety, ethics, and legislation. Recent Findings: Despite the rapid growth of robotic systems and the various potential economic and environmental benefits, there is a lack of clear safety...

Robotics and computerization have drastically changed the agricultural production sector and thus moved it into a new automation era. Robots have historically been used for carrying out routine tasks that require physical strength, accuracy, and repeatability, whereas humans are used to engage with more value-added tasks that need reasoning and dec...

During a baling operation, the operator of the baler should decide when and where to drop the bales in the field to facilitate later retrieval of the bales for transport out of the field. Manually determining the time and place to drop a bale creates extra workload on the operator and may not result in the optimum drop location for the subsequent f...

A field area coverage-planning algorithm has been developed for the optimization and simulation of capacitated field operations such as the organic fertilizer application process. The proposed model provides an optimal coverage plan, which includes the optimal sequence of the visited tracks with a designated application rate. The objective of this...

It is evident that technological advancements will transform the nature of agricultural work. However, because of the inherent features of agricultural production, this transformation will not follow the same path as it is being envisioned in industrial and service sectors. Thus, a targeted analysis of the agricultural occupational environment is a...

Capacitated field operations involve input/output material flows where there are capacity constraints in the form of a specific load that a vehicle can carry. As such, a specific normal-sized field cannot be covered in one single operation using only one load, and the vehicle needs to get serviced (i.e., refilling) from out-of-field facilities (dep...

COVID-19 and the restrictive measures towards containing the spread of its infections have seriously affected the agricultural workforce and jeopardized food security. The present study aims at assessing the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on agricultural labor and suggesting strategies to mitigate them. To this end, after an introduction to the pandemic...

The advent of mobile robots in agriculture has signaled a digital transformation with new automation technologies optimize a range of labor-intensive, resources-demanding, and time-consuming agri-field operations. To that end a generally accepted technical lexicon for mobile robots is lacking as pertinent terms are often used interchangeably. This...

The information of how the high climatic variability in the south‐west Buenos Aires Province (SWBS) region, Argentina, impacts on existing cow–calf operations is needed. This research uses a combination of quantitative (modelling) and qualitative (workshops) methodologies. The objective was to assess, under interannual climate variability, the prod...

This paper presents a methodological framework for the systematic literature review of agricultural sustainability studies. The framework synthesizes all the available literature review criteria and introduces a two-level analysis facilitating systematization, data mining, and methodology analysis. The framework was implemented for the systematic l...

We propose the soil strength and air capacity (SSAC) approach, which was compared with alternative water retention curve (WRC) and the soil consistency (SC) approaches for estimating the water content at wet tillage limit (θWTL), optimum water content for tillage (θOPT) and the water content at the dry tillage limit (θDTL). Unlike the WRC and SC ap...

Over the last century, agriculture transformed from a labour-intensive industry towards mechanisation and power-intensive production systems, while over the last 15 years agricultural industry has started to digitise. Through this transformation there was a continuous labour outflow from agriculture, mainly from standardized tasks within production...

The growing availability and capabilities of sensing and communication infrastructures such as monitoring stations, proximal and remote sensing technologies, geolocation systems, and standard communication protocols, along with apparently decreasing costs of the same technologies are pushing widespread collection, implementation, transmission and u...

ESA provides Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar satellite data freely for research and industry. Sentinel-1 data have shown the potential for remotely monitoring conditions in individual agricultural fields on a weekly basis. Researchers have access to the same Sentinel-1 dataset, so independent validation should be possible. Well documented studi...

Information on how the high climatic variability in the South-West Buenos Aires (SWBS) region impacts livestock systems and on how cost-effective extra feeds are with seasonal and inter annual feeding gaps is expected to enhance farmers’ technology adoption. Therefore, the objectives of this study include making this information available, and asse...

The need to intensify agriculture to meet increasing nutritional needs, in combination with the evolution of unmanned autonomous systems has led to the development of a series of “smart” farming technologies that are expected to replace or complement conventional machinery and human labor. This paper proposes a preliminary methodology for the econo...

Agriculture plays a vital role in the global economy with the majority of the rural population in developing countries depending on it. The depletion of natural resources makes the improvement of the agricultural production more important but also more difficult than ever. This is the reason that although the demand is constantly growing, Informati...

Climate, area expansion and the possibility to grow soybean and maize within a same season using the no-tillage system and mechanized agriculture are factors that promoted the agriculture growth in Mato Grosso State – Brazil. Mechanized operations represent around 23% of production costs for maize and soybean, demanding a considerably powerful mach...

ESA operates the Sentinel-1 satellites, which provides Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data of Earth. Recorded Sentinel-1 data have shown a potential for remotely observing and monitoring local conditions on broad acre fields. Remote sensing using Sentinel-1 have the potential to provide daily updates on the current conditions in the individual fiel...

This conference on biosystems engineering wants agriculture to add a valued contribution to a modern society of the 21th century. We will therefore host engineers, scientists, industry people and practitioners to share and integrate knowledge and expertise from various disciplines. They will highlight innovative technological methods and novel syst...

Agricultural robotics has received attention for approximately 20 years, but today there are only a few examples of the application of robots in agricultural practice. The lack of uptake may be (at least partly) because in many cases there is either no compelling economic benefit, or there is a benefit but it is not recognized. The aim of this chap...

Agriculture nowadays includes automation systems that contribute significantly to many levels of the food production process. Such systems include GPS based systems like auto-steering and Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF). These systems have led to many innovations in agricultural field area coverage design. Integrating these advancements, two diffe...

Various types of sensors technologies, such as machine vision and global positioning system (GPS) have been implemented in navigation of agricultural vehicles. Automated navigation systems have proved the potential for the execution of optimised route plans for field area coverage. This paper presents an assessment of the reduction of the energy re...

Sustainability indicators are well recognized for their potential to assess and monitor sustainable development of agricultural systems. A large number of indicators are proposed in various sustainability assessment frameworks, which raises concerns regarding the validity of approaches, usefulness and trust in such frameworks. Selecting indicators...

Progress is constantly being made and new applications are constantly coming out in the area of field robotics. In this paper, a promising application of field robotics in football playing fields is introduced. An algorithmic approach for generating the way points required for the guidance of a GPS-based field robotic through a football playing fie...

Soil workability and friability are required parameters to consider when creating suitable seedbeds for crop establishment and growth. Knowledge of soil workability is important for scheduling tillage operations and for reducing the risk of tillage-induced structural degradation of soils. A reliable evaluation of soil workability implies a distinct...

The need to decrease unit production costs has led agricultural industries to develop larger and consequently heavier machinery. While this has increased the productivity of single machines, it has also caused significant soil compaction, which may cause reduced crop yield and crop quality. Therefore, mechanisation solutions that have both lower un...

The growth of organic agriculture in Denmark raises the interest of both producers and consumers in the sustainability performance of organic production. The aim of this study was to examine the sustainability performance of farms in four agricultural sectors (vegetable, dairy, pig and poultry) using the sustainability assessment tool RISE 2.0. Thi...

In the past decades a wide variety of tools have been developed to assess the sustainability performance of farms. Although multiple studies have compared tools on a theoretical basis, little attention has been paid to the comparing tools in practice. This research compared indicator-based sustainability assessment tools to gain insight in practica...

A computational tool is developed for the estimation of the energy requirements of Miscanthus x giganteus on individual fields that includes a detailed analysis and account of the involved in-field and transport operations. The tool takes into account all the individual involved in-field and transport operations and provides a detailed analysis on...

Planning agricultural operations requires an understanding of when fields are ready for operations. However determining a field's readiness is a difficult process that can involve large amounts of data and an experienced farm manager. A consequence of this is that operations are often executed when fields are unready, or partially unready, which ca...

While research has been conducted on the workability and trafficability of soils separately, it is the combination of these two factors which allows a decision to be made about a field's readiness for a given operation. Knowledge about when a field is ready for an operation is essential when planning when and where operations should be executed, so...

Statistics on the machinery performance are essential for farm managers to make better decisions. In this paper, the performance of all machineries in five sequential operations, namely bed forming, stone separation, planting, spraying and harvesting in the potato production system, were investigated during one growing season. In order to analyse a...

Due to the increasing demands of a growing world population, farmers are tasked with increasing productivity without increasing resource use. This can be achieved by deploying resources in a more efficient manner and by ensuring operations will produce maximum results. However when contemplating the problem of scheduling multiple machines, executin...

Growing of vegetables is often characterised by intensive field traffic and use of heavy machines. By implementing controlled traffic farming (CTF), compaction of the growth zone can be avoided. An experiment was established in an onion field on a coarse sandy loam. Treatments were applied in the field that for five years had been managed by season...

In potato production multiple sequential operations have to be carried out during the yearly production, and each operation may have its own set of operational features, given by the used machinery. An optimal planning for one operation may lead to restrictions and reduced efficiency to later operations. Therefore, there is a need to develop an app...

Capacitated field operations refer to the operations that involve material flow where there are capacity constraints to the load that the machine is able to carry. A capacitated operation cannot therefore be completed in one operation and the machine has to interrupt the operation, leave the field and travel to an out-of-field facility for refillin...

Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) in agriculture have evolved from simple farm recordkeeping into sophisticated and complex systems to support production management and meet the increased demands to reduce production costs, comply with agricultural standards, and maintain high product quality and safety. This paper presents advancements in...

In certain field operations, such as fertilising, capacity restrictions lead to significant non-productive in-field travelling and out-of-field transport, thereby reducing field efficiency and increasing operating costs. This indicates a potential benefit from improving the efficiency of capacitated operations by minimising the non-productive trave...

Animal slurry is separated in order to avoid excessive nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) fertilization of crops in the field. To enhance fertilizer efficiency further, slurry and its separation products may be acidified, for instance in animal houses. The current study quantified the effects of these treatments, both individually and in comb...

When planning an agricultural field operation there are certain conditions where human planning can lead to low field efficiency, e.g. in the case of irregular field shapes and the presence of obstacles within the field area. The objective of this paper was to develop a planning method that generates a feasible area coverage plan for agricultural m...

Poster

The introduction of intelligent machines and autonomous vehicles to agricultural operations will allow for increased efficiency as well as for reduced environmental impact. Currently, innovative sensing and actuating technologies together with improved information and communication technologies provide the potential for such advancements. However,...

Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) is an in-field traffic management strategy to minimise soil compaction. The aim of this study was to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based on a modelling approach to estimate environmental impacts of producing wheat in Denmark using CTF compared to the conventional practice of Random Traffic Farming (RTF). Com...

Different tillage systems result in different resource uses and environmental impacts. Reduced tillage generates savings in direct energy input and the amount of machinery items needed. As the basics for holistic Life Cycle Assessments, both the influencing direct and indirect energy as sources of greenhouse gas emissions are required. Life Cycle i...

It is expected that the world population will further expand from the current 6 billion to 9-11 billion people in 2050. This faces us with an enormous challenge to feed this population and still keep production within the limits of planet Earth's carrying capacity. Smart Farming - i.e. the use of smart, data-rich ICT-services and applications, in c...

Harvesting and mowing operations are among the main potential stressors affecting wildlife within agricultural landscapes, leading to large animal losses. A number of studies have been conducted on harvesting practices to address the problem of wildlife mortality, providing a number of management actions or field area coverage strategies. Neverthel...

This Special issue deals with two types of supply chains, the agrifood supply chain ('farm-to-fork') and the biomass supply chain ('farm-to-energy'), both originating on the farm and directed towards different end-usages. Regardless of the different end-usages, both chains involve inherent high complexity due to the interactions between the consist...

Testing agricultural operations and management practises associated with different machinery, systems and planning approaches can be both costly and time-consuming. Computer simulations of such systems are used for development and testing, however, to gain experience of the real-world performance an intermediate step between simulation and full sca...

B-patterns are algorithmically-computed sequences of field-work tracks for agricultural vehicles completely covering an area that do not follow any pre-determined standard motif, as in the conventional field-work patterns, but are a result of an optimisation process under one or more selected criteria. Here, an initial approach for the assessment o...

Livestock production is experiencing dynamic growth and specialisation, and is facing the challenge of ensuring that changes in production systems include the development of environmentally friendly manure management systems. This chapter provides an overview of manure management systems and technologies for removing solid and liquid manure from an...

Data interchange between Web client based task controllers and management information systems using ISO and OGC standards". EFITA-WCCA-CIGR Conference "Sustainable Agriculture through ICT Innovation", Turin, Italy, 24-27 June 2013. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not...

The sequence of working the parallel lines in agricultural field area coverage operations can be optimized to minimize the total non-productive time. The amount of savings achieved in using the optimized sequence, denoted the B-pattern, compared to the conventional sequence varies considerably depending on the operation's features. This work presen...

The logistics and the handling of animal waste or other biomasses to and from a biogas plant are a vital part of the overall operational, economic, and energetic viability of the biogas production process. Therefore, there is a need for comprehensive modelling approaches considering different operational constraints. The objectives of this paper we...

Currently, the planning of the biomass collection operations is performed relying on the contractor’s experience without the use of any dedicated planning tool. It is expected that more explicitly formulated planning tools would provide benefits on securing the supply chain of biomass feedstock. In this study, the problem of finding a permutation s...

Controlled traffic farming (CTF) is a strategy to minimise soil compaction, which is being implemented worldwide. The aim of this study was to review and analyse the state-of-the-art regarding the environmental impacts of CTF. CTF, when compared with random traffic farming (RTF), was able to reduce environmental issues, such as soil emissions of ni...

The production of biogas from animal, crops, or urban waste benefits environmental-friendly energy production, and it is also beneficial for sustainable agricultural production through the use of liquid organic fertiliser as a source of organic matter. A number of systems are available for the transportation and application of the liquid organic fe...

Technological advances combined with the demand of cost efficiency and environmental considerations has led farmers to review their practices towards the adoption of new managerial approaches, including enhanced automation. The application of field robots is one of the most promising advances among automation technologies. Since the primary goal of...

Crop simulation models have the potential to assess the risk associated with the selection of a specific N fertilizer rate, by integrating the effects of soil-crop interactions on crop growth under different pedo-climatic and management conditions. The objective of this study was to simulate the environmental and economic impact (nitrate leaching a...

In grass conservation systems, drying in the field is an essential process upon which the quality and quantity of the material to be conserved is dependent on. In this study a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model, previously validated, was used to assess qualitatively and quantitatively the field drying process of cut grass under different weat...

The managerial tasks for agriculture are currently transforming into a new paradigm, requiring more attention on the interaction with the surroundings (e.g. environment, public entities, documentation of quality and growing conditions). Recently, many advances in farm machinery have enabled them to acquire a large number of data through the ISOBUS...