Current Prototypes of Field Robots
Armin Werner1 Rory Roten1 Luc van Rijen2
1 Lincoln Agritech PO Box 69 133, Lincoln 7640, New Zealand
2 HAS University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
Email: Armin.Werner@lincolnagritech.co.nz
Excitement is being generated at conferences, farmer’s workshops and the general media about the next level in precision agriculture: field robots. We all know that robots work in factories to carry parts or conduct specific actions in manufacturing and that indoor robots are already standard technology in many industries.
There is also interest in developing autonomous equivalents in agriculture beyond the current tractor-carried or self-propelled equipment. There are already some tomato and cucumber picking robots in use in greenhouses in Europe and North America. However, stepping out of the ‘controlled’ environment of a factory building or a greenhouse into the unforgiving conditions of an arable field, a pasture or an orchard poses many serious challenges for scientists and engineers.
Most of these technical challenges have been solved or at least solutions are prototyped for outdoor conditions. This includes the exact positioning and the orientation of the robot under changing ambient light and weather or infrastructure, the recognition of the dynamically changing environment of a field robot as well as precisely controlling the actions that a robot has to conduct in a highly variable environment.
With these preconditions in mind, it is most likely that agricultural robotics will develop very fast in the next years. It is unclear what the first major applications may be and what challenges farmers will face when it comes to using such robots as standard equipment. From discussions with farmers, growers and the industry it is anticipated that weeding robots for row crops (annual field crops, perennial tree and vine crops) will be a good candidate to pave the way for field robots into agriculture.
The presentation will give an overview of current prototypes and weeding robots which are commercially available. We will discuss general differences between these robots and the type of applications that are intended.