OLDS COLLEGE
Research Team Wins ASTech Award

The Smart Agriculture Applied Research team at Olds College of Agriculture & Technology has won a prestigious ASTech Award. 

Roy Maki, Research Project Manager; Yevgen Mykhaylichenko, Technology Integration Specialist; Sofia Bahmutsky, Data Scientist; and Julie Cobb, Research Technician are just part of a dedicated team of 20 people at Olds College that took home Researcher of the Year honours at the 2024 ASTech Awards Gala held in Edmonton on Nov. 1.

"We are thrilled to win this award," said Maki. "Although we didn't get into research to win awards, we are honoured to be recognized by leaders in our industry." 

Since 1990, the ASTech Foundation has recognized outstanding achievements in science and technology innovation across Alberta. 

Maki has been at the forefront of the autonomous agriculture equipment initiative for broadacre crop production at Olds College. Over four years of intensive research, Roy and his team gathered data and insights from the Raven OMNiPOWER platform to better understand the advantages and challenges of autonomous agriculture equipment.

The results of a four-year autonomous study show how autonomous equipment could be a crucial agricultural asset for producers. Data gathered indicates OMNiPOWER efficiency and fuel usage has improved over the past few years to a point where it rivals typical equipment used on Canadian Prairie farms. 

"In 2020, Olds College purchased OMNiPOWER with three compatible implements for academic, training, farming, research and evaluation purposes," said Maki. "In 2023, the team also was gifted a new OMNiPOWER 3200 platform from Raven Industries, Inc. Over the past four years, more than 20,000 autonomous acres of broadacre cropland were farmed on the Smart Farm and three different producer partner sites."

You can read more about the autonomous research project on page 36 to 40 of the 2024 Smart Farm Impact Report.