Robotics In Agriculture (original) (raw)

New Trends in Robotics for Agriculture: Integration and Assessment of a Real Fleet of Robots

The Scientific World Journal, 2014

Computer-based sensors and actuators such as global positioning systems, machine vision, and laser-based sensors have progressively been incorporated into mobile robots with the aim of configuring autonomous systems capable of shifting operator activities in agricultural tasks. However, the incorporation of many electronic systems into a robot impairs its reliability and increases its cost. Hardware minimization, as well as software minimization and ease of integration, is essential to obtain feasible robotic systems. A step forward in the application of automatic equipment in agriculture is the use of fleets of robots, in which a number of specialized robots collaborate to accomplish one or several agricultural tasks. This paper strives to develop a system architecture for both individual robots and robots working in fleets to improve reliability, decrease complexity and costs, and permit the integration of software from different developers. Several solutions are studied, from a fully distributed to a whole integrated architecture in which a central computer runs all processes. This work also studies diverse topologies for controlling fleets of robots and advances other prospective topologies. The architecture presented in this paper is being successfully applied in the RHEA fleet, which comprises three ground mobile units based on a commercial tractor chassis.

Research and development in agricultural robotics: A perspective of digital farming

Digital farming is the practice of modern technologies such as sensors, robotics, and data analysis for shifting from tedious operations to continuously automated processes. This paper reviews some of the latest achievements in agricultural robotics, specifically those that are used for autonomous weed control, field scouting, and harvesting. Object identification, task planning algorithms, digitalization and optimization of sensors are highlighted as some of the facing challenges in the context of digital farming. The concepts of multi-robots, human-robot collaboration, and environment reconstruction from aerial images and ground-based sensors for the creation of virtual farms were highlighted as some of the gateways of digital farming. It was shown that one of the trends and research focuses in agricultural field robotics is towards building a swarm of small scale robots and drones that collaborate together to optimize farming inputs and reveal denied or concealed information. For the case of robotic harvesting, an autonomous framework with several simple axis manipulators can be faster and more efficient than the currently adapted professional expensive manipulators. While robots are becoming the inseparable parts of the modern farms, our conclusion is that it is not realistic to expect an entirely automated farming system in the future.

An Overview of Cooperative Robotics in Agriculture

Agronomy

Agricultural robotics has been a popular subject in recent years from an academic as well as a commercial point of view. This is because agricultural robotics addresses critical issues such as seasonal shortages in manual labor, e.g., during harvest, as well as the increasing concern regarding environmentally friendly practices. On one hand, several individual agricultural robots have already been developed for specific tasks (e.g., for monitoring, spraying, harvesting, transport, etc.) with varying degrees of effectiveness. On the other hand, the use of cooperative teams of agricultural robots in farming tasks is not as widespread; yet, it is an emerging trend. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the work carried out so far in the area of cooperative agricultural robotics and identifies the state-of-the-art. This paper also outlines challenges to be addressed in fully automating agricultural production; the latter is promising for sustaining an increasingly vast human p...

Fleets of robots for precision agriculture: a simulation environment

Industrial Robot: An International Journal, 2013

Seventh Framework Program: RHEA -Robot Fleets for Highly Effective Agriculture and Forestry Management (RHEA, 2012) and CROPS -Intelligent sensing and manipulation for sustainable production and harvesting of high value crops (CROPS, 2012). The RHEA project, on which this work is inspired, focuses on the design, development, and testing of a new generation of automatic and robotic systems for both chemical and physical effective weed management, applicable to both agriculture and forestry. In contrast, the CROPS project focuses on the development of scientific know-how for a highly configurable, modular, and clever carrier platform that includes modular parallel manipulators and intelligent tools (sensors, algorithms, sprayers, grippers), which can be easily installed onto the carrier and are capable of adapting to new tasks and conditions. The aforementioned projects have in common the use of advance perception systems and innovative actuation systems on board mobile platforms with different degrees of autonomy. Small vehicles ensure higher positioning accuracy during operation and are intrinsically lighter than big machines. This last feature reduces the soil compaction and makes the vehicles safer in terms of safety to others, own safety and crop safety, all important features in agricultural equipment nowadays .

Scientific Trends and Role of Robots in the Agricultural Sector

International Journal of Advanced Networking and Applications

The agriculture sector is essential to implement the automation technology to grow rapidly for better results and to produce crops for the requirement of the world population in the present scenario. Present existing technology and old mythologies and tools and types of machinery are not sufficient to achieve the targets. The enhanced technology and optimized energy utilization tools are straightaway to be adopted in the form of information technology machines that are more effective with old methods. The precision formation has revealed the advantages of machinery technology but needs to improve more for the next new equipment for the coming generations, which we call robotics technologies. The initiation of an autonomous system gives us a better prospect to build up a completely new variety of farming kits with the support of small elegant equipments like types of machinery which will do an accurate process, at the right time with the exact place, in the correct approach. A machine that contains an automatic control mechanism tracks the front running vehicle and follows, which has advantages of both vehicles that can be controlled and monitored effectively by a single driver in large farming sectors.

Robotics for Sustainable Broad-Acre Agriculture

Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, 2015

This paper describes the development of small low-cost cooperative robots for sustainable broad-acre agriculture to increase broad-acre crop production and reduce environmental impact. The current focus of the project is to use robotics to deal with resistant weeds, a critical problem for Australian farmers. To keep the overall system affordable our robot uses low-cost cameras and positioning sensors to perform a large scale coverage task while also avoiding obstacles. A multi-robot coordinator assigns parts of a given field to individual robots. The paper describes the modification of an electric vehicle for autonomy and experimental results from one real robot and twelve simulated robots working in coordination for approximately two hours on a 55 hectare field in Emerald Australia. Over this time the real robot 'sprayed' 6 hectares missing 2.6% and overlapping 9.7% within its assigned field partition, and successfully avoided three obstacles.

Robots in Agriculture: State of Art and Practical Experiences

Service Robots, 2018

The presence of robots in agriculture has grown significantly in recent years, overcoming some of the challenges and complications of this field. This chapter aims to collect a complete and recent state of the art about the application of robots in agriculture. The work addresses this topic from two perspectives. On the one hand, it involves the disciplines that lead the automation of agriculture, such as precision agriculture and greenhouse farming, and collects the proposals for automatizing tasks like planting and harvesting, environmental monitoring and crop inspection and treatment. On the other hand, it compiles and analyses the robots that are proposed to accomplish these tasks: e.g. manipulators, ground vehicles and aerial robots. Additionally, the chapter reports with more detail some practical experiences about the application of robot teams to crop inspection and treatment in outdoor agriculture, as well as to environmental monitoring in greenhouse farming.

Application of Robotics in Modern Agriculture

JUST AGRICULTURE, 2021

With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, agricultural production must double if it is to meet the increasing demands for food and bioenergy. Given limited land, water, and labor resources, it is estimated that the efficiency of agricultural productivity must increase by 25% to meet that goal while limiting the growing pressure that agriculture puts on the environment. Robotics and automation can play a significant role in society meeting 2050 agricultural production needs. This article majorly focuses on the application of robotics in agriculture, and how it can help farmers by reducing their workload and enhancing their income.

A Review on Applications of robotics in Agriculture

2020

Over past few decades, the agriculture industry has faced new challenges. Previously, self-sufficiency in food and rural migration to cities were the significant concerns. With the advancement of science, more challenges now threaten this industry. Food security is a global concern. Governments worldwide are facing unprecedented rise in demand for food, human population is growing rapidly, but land and agriculture resources remain the same, and in some cases it’s even shrinking. The projected world's population to grow to more than 9.15 billion by 2050 (Kondo et al., 1996). Therefore, the challenge for the next decades will be to supply the needs of the expanding world population by developing a highly productive agriculture management, also at the same time preserving the quality of the environment (Rubens et al., 2010). Most of the developing countries including India facing agricultural labour shortage problem. A major portion of youths from village migrating to urban for led...

Editorial: Agricultural robotics

Journal of Field Robotics, 2009

ABSTRACT As world population growth requires an increasing level of farm production at the same time that environmental preservation is a priority, the development of new agricultural tools and methods is required. In this framework, the development of robotic ...