Belarusian MTZ's driverless tractor presented in Russia's Tatarstan

KAZAN, 22 September (BelTA) – Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko presented a driverless tractor in the Russian city of Kazan, BelTA has learned. The original tractor was made by the Belarusian company MTZ.

The unmanned tractor KFU-MTZ-112 boasts a high degree of automation. It was developed by the excellence center for robot technology and artificial intelligence of the Computational Mathematics and Information Technologies Institute of the Kazan Federal University (KFU) in association with OOO TPK MTZ-Tatarstan within the framework of the university's strategic academic leadership program.

The Belarusian tractor model 112N-01 was automated as part of the project. A breadboard model of the automated tractor has been made so far. The model is designed to perform various functions in open areas: fields, farms, outdoor areas of manufacturing enterprises.

Specialists said that the driverless tractor has various control modes: manual control, remote control, strategic control, and tactical control.

If the tractor is controlled remotely, the operator can use a tablet to operate the tractor while staying in the control room or near the tractor. In strategic control mode the tractor is given a concrete route and can travel along this route. In tactical mode the tractor can be given a specific task such as, for instance, delivering freight to a specific location and the tractor can decide how to do it by analyzing the target environment. Some of the functions of each control mode have been implemented already.

While making the breadboard model of the tractor, specialists made breadboard models of the automated piloting system and the computer vision system. They also installed a parallel driving module in order to give the tractor additional functionality while preserving the possibility of standard manual control using the steering wheel. Various other components were developed and installed.

The automated tractor was presented as part of the solemn opening ceremony of Belarus Expo in the special economic zone Alabuga in April 2022 and at the international industrial expo Innoprom in Yekaterinburg in July 2022.