With a background in robotics and his youth spent on his parent’s mixed farm in remote Eastern Serbia, Dr Alen Alempijevic from the Centre for Autonomous Systems (CAS) at UTS, is well-qualified to help Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) in their quest to automate some key wool handling processes.
“Although AWI have been interested in applying robotics to sheep shearing and wool handling since the 1980s, previous attempts haven’t quite got the traction needed. But now the time and, importantly, the technology is ripe for another try,” he says.
The CAS team, which has enjoyed significant success in other agricultural automation projects (including autonomous tractors and automated livestock management), drew the attention of AWI in 2019. They soon embarked on a four-year project to revisit how automation might be applied in the wool industry.
“Despite there being demand for workers, and wool attracting a great price (Australian Merino in particular), because the job is labour intensive and physically demanding, there is a continuing skills shortage of shearers and wool handlers in Australia,” Alempijevic explains.
“If we can automate some of the in-shed assessment and sorting processes, we should be able to speed things up while reducing costs, which, of course, means more money in the pockets of woolgrowers.”
UTS has expert technical staff who are great communicators and the university has excellent facilities.
— Carolina Diaz, Program Manager for Agritechnology, Australian Wool Innovation
The team spent the first six months gathering information from the wool industry, including world champion shearers, and explaining how automation might be applied to the industry. Then, together, they worked out the best strategy forwards.
“Although we did scope the possibility of automating the act of sheep shearing itself, AWI decided, in the first instance, to focus efforts on streamlining the post-shearing activities,” continues Alempijevic.
Freshly shorn fleece currently undergoes manual wool-handling, which includes quality inspection, trimming and baling. Recruiting workers to perform these tasks is increasingly difficult, so these activities are obvious candidates for automation as a way of helping producers process and track their wool and increase its value.
The overall aim of the project is to create prototype robots that can successfully detect and trim the dirty parts of the wool, coarsely class and bale it for transport. A stretch goal would be to incorporate sensors that will text a driver for pickup when the baling is complete.
Carolina Diaz is AWI’s Program Manager for Agritechnology and is working closely with the team at CAS on this project. She says UTS has been great to work with. “The experience has been really positive. UTS has expert technical staff who are great communicators and the university has excellent facilities,” she says.
From AWI’s perspective, the key to any collaboration with researchers is making sure it results in a highly practical outcome. “AWI needs real outcomes from our research projects, ones that attract investor partners and companies wanting to commercialise new products, so it’s important our objectives align with those of our collaborators,” she continues.
“Alen’s team have been great in this respect. They carefully consider the requirements and how they can make the biggest impact. The shearing industry hasn’t changed in many years, so there is a lot of work to do, but I think this is a great project to kick-start that transformation.”
Research team
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Senior Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering -
Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering -
Senior Lecturer, School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering -
Head of School, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Research centre
- UTS Robotics Lab, Centre for Autonomous Systems
Funded by
- Australian Wool Innovation R&D Fund
