ROBOTS AND FARMING
PICK AND CHOOSE Robots Are Coming to a Farm Field Near You BY ERIC TEGLER
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Above: A strawberryharvesting robot developed by Harvest CROO Robotics moves through the rows of a strawberry field.
catalysts for developing agribots are inexorably rising demand for food and rising labor costs.
DEMAND AND LABOR “We’re going to have to innovate to make up for future [food] demand,” said Manoj Karkee, Ph.D. Karkee is an associate professor at Washington State University’s Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems. He is an expert in agricultural robotics who leads a research team working on the employment of autonomous UAVs to deter birds from damaging crops. The food demand that Karkee references is expected from a global population rise of more than 2 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations’ World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. Increased wealth in Asia and Africa means that consumption per capita will also increase, further spurring demand. Along with reducing crop waste
PHOTO COURTESY OF HARVEST CROO ROBOTICS
W
ithin the next decade, the term “mechanized agriculture” will refer to more than the stereotypical combines, feeders, and irrigation systems we’ve come to associate with farming. A new wave of robotic mechanization is on the cusp of washing over the industry in a drive to significantly increase agricultural productivity even as it reduces the number of human hands involved. “Robots” have been in field (or above) in the form of self-driving tractors, materials-handling machines, and aerial imaging/sensing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for more than 10 years. They’ll soon be joined by new artificial intelligence (AI) enabled counterparts that will assume the tasks of weeding, seeding, spraying, and harvesting. According to a study just released by London-based market research firm TechNavio, the global market for autonomous farm equipment will see compound annual growth of approximately 15 percent by 2023. Advances in AI, machine vision, and manipulative robotics are making such growth possible, but the
