Feldschwarm® Ecosystem: An Open Ecosystem for Cooperative Autonomous Agricultural Machinery & Robotics

The Feldschwarm® Ecosystem is a research and development initiative addressing the challenges of distributed autonomy and cooperative control in agricultural systems. The project investigates and implements an open, modular, and manufacturer-independent system architecture for the coordinated operation of multiple autonomous and semi-autonomous agricultural machines within a shared operational environment.

A central development focus lies in the design of a heterogeneous multi-agent system in which mobile field units are networked via standardized communication interfaces and coordinated through higher-level control and decision-support components. The architecture integrates artificial intelligence–based perception and decision-making, cloud-assisted data processing, and real-time machine-to-machine communication, enabling synchronized task execution and adaptive behavior under dynamic field conditions.

A core contribution of the Feldschwarm® Ecosystem is the realization of swarm-based field operations, where distributed agents collaboratively perform agricultural tasks while sharing sensory data, state information, and operational constraints. This cooperative approach facilitates robustness, scalability, and fault tolerance, and enables more precise resource application, reduced energy consumption, and increased overall system efficiency.

Human–machine interaction is addressed through supervisory control concepts that allow human operators to monitor system states, manage mission planning, and intervene when necessary, while preserving a high degree of operational autonomy at the machine level.

The system is designed as an open and extensible platform, supporting interoperability across different machine types and manufacturers, and ensuring compatibility with existing agricultural information systems.

Funded within the German federal RUBIN program, the Feldschwarm® Ecosystem contributes to applied research in autonomous agricultural robotics and provides a foundation for the transfer of cooperative multi-machine systems into real-world farming practice.

Dr. Andreas Griesing (ESTINO GmbH)