Lupine Publishers | Advances in Robotics & Mechanical Engineering
Introduction
Revolution of Robotic
farmer is on the way, fruit picking machines are ready to roll into the fields
and will replace human workers at one point of time. A Robot Farmer is just a
one of the new technologies that will completely transform agriculture sector.
Today’s agricultural technology helps farmers to plow and spray crops. In an
improved automation and big data analytics with farming robot technology are
pointing out to big benefits. Goldman Sachs estimates precision farming – the
combination of agriculture and technology could be around $240 billion market
by 2050. As per Euro monitor intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence,
analytics and machines for precision farming is one of the top industry’s top
opportunities. In Europe, Spanish company called Agrobot has developed a
strawberry farming robot. It uses up to 24 robotic arms to pick fruit and is
capable of autonomous navigation. In England, Dogtooth Technologies are
developing its own series of autonomous robots capable of picking fruit. Dogtooth
machines are proficient enough of autonomous navigation, locating and picking
ripe fruit and grading its quality [1] (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Illustrates Harvesting CROO’s machine is headed for farms in Florida and California. Image Credit: Image courtesy of Harvest CROO Robotics [1].
Robotic Weeders
The increasing
recognition of robotic weeders for specialty crops has grown – Specialty crops
are vegetables like lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes and onions. These are not
produced in mass like corn, soybeans and wheat. The reason for robotic weeders
steams from two major issues. One is a deficiency of herbicides available for
usage in specialty crops. Another issue; as a matter of fact hand-weeding has
become more and more expensive. Without pesticides, growers have had to hire
people to hand-weed vast fields. Hand weeding is very slow and increasing
expensive, it can cost around $150-$30 per acre. That is one of the reasons
some people look to robotic weeders. The robotic weeders are programmed to
recognize a pattern and can differentiate between a plant and the soil.
Although, they currently are having trouble to differentiate between a weed and
a crop. The robotic weeders in the market cost between $120,000 and $175,000,
it is a better longterm option than expensive hand weeding. Fennimore considers
that robotic weeders are the future of weeding for specialty crops. The reason
because of higher labor costs and more incentives to grow organically with less
pesticides. European growers have been using robotic weeders for a while [2]
(Figure 2).
Figure 2: Illustrates robotic weeder is operating in a field near Santa
Maria, CA. Image Credit: Image courtesy of Steven Fennimore [2].
In automation areas for
instance, automotive industry are not the only ones to depend on robots. In
agriculture, automation systems are surpassing strenuous manual labor. As a
project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology
developed and tested a dual arm robotic system for automated harvesting of
cucumbers. In Germany, cucumbers are ordained for pickles that are harvested
with the aid of “cucumber flyers” – a farm vehicles with wing like add-ons.
Many of the country’s agricultural regions subsequently face an uncertain
future; cucumber farming has already begun moving to Eastern Europe and India.
Thus, there is a pressing requirement for improved harvesting technologies to
maintain economic viability of cucumber farming in Germany. Experts developed a
dual arm robot system consisting of inexpensive light modules. This system is
used for automated cucumber farming and other agricultural applications. This
Robotic cucumber picker is cost effective, high performance and dependable.
Even in adverse weather, it is capable of first identifying ripe cucumbers and
then using its two gripper arms to gently pick and store them. This novel
method can also make it possible for to imitate human movements. Scientist want
to make sure that it does not damage crops or pull to their roots out of the
soil. This robotic cucumber harvester is as efficient as its experienced human
counterpart, who can pick as many as 13 cucumbers per minute. Cucumber farmers
and agricultural associations have expressed significant interest in the dual
arm robot [3] (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Illustrates prototype of the dual-arm robot system during the first field tests. Image Credit: Fraunhofer IPK [3].
Harvesting Broccoli using Robots
This Project was jointly
funded by BBSRC and create improvements in United Kingdom; in this 3D camera
technology was used to recognize and select whether broccoli is ready for
collecting. It is the key step towards the development of an automatic robotic
harvesting system for broccoli, which will not only considerably decrease
production costs but also decrease amount of labor cost. This project also addresses
challenges associated with recognition, deterrence and management of disease by
creating diagnostic tools for farm use and substitute to chemical pesticides.
This will allow the major producers in these industries to rapidly analyze the
existence of disease and enable earlier decision making. It is also expected
that this development of project will create long-needed substitute to use of
pesticides by mushroom and potato industries therefore ensuring future
sustainability [4] (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Illustrates the TerraSentia robot that autonomously monitors crops earned the best systems paper award at Robotics: Science and Systems, the preeminent robotics conference held in Pittsburgh. Image Credit: TERRA-MEPP Project [6].
Counting Crop Using Robots
Crop breeders run large
scale of trials comparing thousands of varieties of crops over hundreds of
acres and measure key qualities, for instance emergence of plant, height, by
hand. This task is expensive, inaccurate, time consuming and completely
inadequate; team can only measure these manually by fraction of plants in a
field. TerraSentia is a compact transportable robot weight about 24 pounds and
13 inch wide. It can capture each plant from to bottom using advanced suite of
cameras, deep learning and complex algorithms. Using a method called learning
method, experts taught TerraSentia to count corn plants with just 300 images.
It is a TERRA-MEPP research task that is low cost phenotyping robot to
recognize top performing crops. This research was controlled by the University
of Illinois in collaboration with Cornell University and Signetron with
sustenance from Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy [5,6].
Combatting Weeds by Laser Robots
Farmers who want rich
harvest and need to drive weeds so that crops can cultivate better. In organic
agriculture – herbicides are not considered as they are toxic chemicals and
only unwanted plants should be arduously weeded out. This time-consuming work are
taken care of laser robots. Computer Experts in Photogrammetry at University of
Bonn have developed a new system using advanced cameras on all terrain robot
vehicle or tractor add-on and unwanted wild weeds are automatically identified
in various crops and taken out. Scientists are moving forward for their startup
to develop the business plan for this novel technology and also working to buy
the parts required for the project to construct a prototype. At University of
Bonn, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, both founders won an award for the best
novel technology. “The aim is to contribute in achieving more sustainable
agriculture. The robot fires the leaves of unnecessary plants in the crops with
short laser pulses, which weakens in their strength” [7].
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