Startup with a Lincoln connection is automating cattle feeding
By NEAL FRANKLIN – Lincoln Journal Star, Neb. (TNS)
Ag Expo, 12.12
Jacob Hansen, CEO of ALA Engineering, explains how the company’s automated feed truck works during the Nebraska Ag Expo on Dec. 12 at Sandhills Global Event Center.
Driving a feed truck on a farm means steering a 60,000-pound vehicle inches away from a concrete feed trough that would wreck the truck.
While augers are shoveling food out of the truck to the hungry cattle below, drivers have to drive perfectly straight.
“It’s just one of the most demanding jobs in one of the worst environments out there,” said Jacob Hansen, the CEO of ALA Engineering. “And so food truck drivers, specifically, do not stick around very long.”
ALA Engineering, a startup based in Scottsbluff that also has an office at Nebraska Innovation Campus, hopes to change the livestock industry with driverless technology. The company showed off its concept for a driverless feed truck at the Nebraska Ag Expo in Lincoln earlier this month. Hansen said the truck could help farmers deal with labor shortages and food costs.
The ALA Navigator is still being developed, but the company brought its technology attached to a normal feed truck to the Ag Expo.
Ag Expo, 12.12
ALA Engineering’s driverless feed truck aims to help farmers who have to drive large trucks with precision to feed cattle.
Once the truck is on the market, it would drive a predetermined route with lane limits. The truck will also have sensors in order to see any obstacles on the road ahead while it is dumping feed.
Hansen, who studied software engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the predetermined routes that will be used by the truck means that autonomous vehicles in agricultural settings are safer than a driverless car in city traffic.
“When larger robotaxi companies and stuff make big public mistakes, it shines negatively on the autonomy industry as a whole,” Hansen said. “And it’s worth knowing that agricultural and industrial and off-highway autonomy is a lot different than kind of urban autonomy, especially when it comes to safety.”
Although the company’s trucks may be less likely to crash, there are still big stakes.
“If you plant a week late it’s a big deal,” Hansen said. “If you don’t feed cattle for a week, it’s the end of the world.”
The engineering company is building multiple different sensors into the truck so that it can operate day after day in whatever weather conditions a state like Nebraska might throw at it.
The backup sensors even have backups. Asher Khor, the senior embedded engineer for the company and a UNL graduate, said the truck can be accurate within less than an inch.
Ag Expo, 12.12
Asher Khor (left), the senior embedded engineer for ALA Engineering, shows off the company’s automated feed truck at the Nebraska Ag Expo on Dec. 12 at Sandhills Global Event Center.
“If you’re a few inches off, you will hit the bunk,” Khor said. “They’re major vehicles and so we need really, really precise accuracy of the vehicle.”
The truck is meant to solve problems like inaccuracies in food distribution and crashes. Hansen also said the agriculture industry as a whole has experienced labor shortages.
The average farmer was unable to hire 21% of the workforce they would have hired under normal circumstances, according to a 2022 National Council of Agricultural Employers survey.
The vehicle is set to go into production in 2026, Hansen said. Before then, the company will work on commercial pilot programs and complying with different regulations.
The truck will be ALA Engineering’s first product. Hansen said the company had built a driver-assistance program but decided to keep engineers working in research and development, building toward the end goal of an autonomous vehicle.
The startup’s goal isn’t to replace all of a farmer’s trucks or employees, Hansen said. He said good employees are often more useful elsewhere in a stockyard.
“As your oldest truck ages out of your fleet, bring in one of ours,” Hansen said. “As you lose an employee, or you have an unfilled position, bring in one of our trucks.”
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