VLADIVOSTOK, September 8. /TASS/. Robotic tractors with artificial intelligence are planned to be supplied to Brazil and other countries, Minister for Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexey Chekunkov said at the Eastern Economic Forum.

On Friday, the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic announced a project to introduce robotic tractors in agriculture in the Amur Region. Investment will amount to 1 billion rubles ($12.3 million). The Amur Region will have an operator of a machine tractor station to offer to local agriculture enterprises comprehensive field processing services using universal robotic tractors of its own design equipped with artificial intelligence technologies. The project is being implemented using advanced technologies from the Cognitive Pilot Company, one of the world leaders in artificial intelligence. This is a clear example of how Russian high-tech developments, which are not inferior to their global counterparts, are working for specific development tasks in the Far East - in this case, to increase efficiency and technology of the agro-industrial complex.

"We are launching a pilot project in the Amur Region, and during the next season the tractors should go out into the fields and prove, according to calculations and the manufacturing company, the productivity that will be 30 % higher than similar systems managed by people. If this is true, then we are actually making a small revolution in agriculture, and we could be able to extrapolate quickly this technology not only inside Russia, which, let me remind you, is the world's leading grain exporter, and it is our most powerful industry, and, respectively, a huge domestic and large international market. The company has been negotiating already with Brazil and other countries," the minister said.

During the forum, he continued, the project was presented to a major Chinese-Thai company with assets of $27 billion. "I had a meeting, they also showed great interest. I think it is precisely regarding such technologies that we can fulfill the president's order to develop innovative sectors in the Far East," the minister added.

The Cognitive Pilot Company, he said, has implemented one of the best examples of agricultural robots in the world, which is important for the Far East, experiencing a personnel shortage. Fields could be processed by small autonomous, fairly simple tractors with machine vision - with AI cameras.

About the forum

The 10th Eastern Economic Forum took place in Vladivostok from September 3 to 6 under the theme "The Far East: Cooperation for Peace and Prosperity." The Roscongress Foundation was the event's organizer, with TASS as its general information partner.