Versión en Español

The School of Exact Sciences and Engineering of Sergio Arboleda University was the hostess of the CCRA – IEE Colombian Conference on Robotics and Automation, developed last 29th and 30th September, and which was attended by leading national and international researchers, pioneers in the development of innovative solutions.

One of them was Timo Oksanen, Finnish engineer, whom for more than a decade is working on the creation of agricultural solutions based on the automation of the process and robotics. The automatic tractor, which until now has optimized the work in about 25 hectares, is one of his contributions, like the design of other agricultural machines.

ORI – NEWS spoke with him and he revealed that, away from any automatic device or from cities renowned for their waste in technology, he discovered his passion in robotics: a Lego set, with which he spent his afternoons on the farm where he grew up, was the engine that took him to walk this path.

“If you do work by hand or by manual way then you easily get inspired that this could be done in more automatic way, I think that was my inspiration something like 22 years ago” he argues.

About the implementation of these automatic process in countries like Colombia, he says that the most important thing is to know the details of the operation of the crops that are wanted to optimize. “ I don’t know anything about coffee plant, how coffee beans are produced but anyway that would be the first thing to understand and then see the opportunities in technology, how to combine these applications or what you can do in an autonomous way” he points.

Beside him, also were involved researchers like the Colombian Lina Paz, whom currently serves as professor at the University of Oxford, Carlos Santacruz-Rosero, Ph.D. in robotics at the University of Tokyo and Davide Scaramuzza, professor of the University of Zurich, who shared with ORI-NEWS some of his experience and research.