ASSESSMENT OF THE OPERATING COST OF UNMANNED AGRICULTURAL UNITS

Currently, research is being actively carried out on the development of unmanned mobile agricultural equipment capable of performing a range of different operations when combined with various agricultural machines. One of the key issues regarding the prospects for using unmanned mobile devices is assessing the economic efficiency of their use. As a result of the analysis of generally accepted methods for calculating the cost of operating mobile vehicles, it was revealed that the cost of operating unmanned mobile vehicles depends on their cost, annual load, power, productivity of agricultural units formed with them and the number of unmanned mobile vehicles controlled by one dispatch center operator. An assessment of the cost of operating unmanned mobile vehicles showed that the use of unmanned mobile vehicles created on the basis of commercially produced tractors while maintaining the existing gradation of traction classes and power allows reducing the cost of a motor-hour of operation compared to basic tractors by 3...19%, depending on traction class. The use of low-power universal unmanned mobile vehicles working in a group allows reducing the cost of a motor-hour of operation relative to a base tractor only in traction classes 0.2-0.6, and unmanned mobile vehicles created on the basis of several similar energy modules - only in traction classes 0.2-0.9. In the course of assessing the maximum economically feasible costs for re-equipping a base tractor when creating unmanned mobile vehicles on its basis, it was found that with an increase in the traction class, the limit of the maximum economically feasible costs for conversion increases, while the share of costs for re-equipping the base tractor in the cost of unmanned mobile vehicles decreases from 183% in traction class 0.2 to 11% in traction class 8. Thus, it has been established that it is economically feasible to convert serial tractors of the highest traction classes into unmanned mobile vehicles first of all.