Robotics for agriculture and forestry (A&F) represents the ultimate application of one of our society’s latest and most advanced innovations to its most ancient and important industries. Over the course of history, mechanization and automation increased crop output several orders of magnitude, enabling a geometric growth in population and an increase in quality of life across the globe. Rapid population growth and rising incomes in developing countries, however, require ever larger amounts of A&F output. This chapter addresses robotics for A&F in the form of case studies where robotics is being successfully applied to solve well-identified problems. With respect to plant crops, the focus is on the in-field or in-farm tasks necessary to guarantee a quality crop and, generally speaking, end at harvest time. In the livestock domain, the focus is on breeding and nurturing, exploiting, harvesting, and slaughtering and processing. The chapter is organized in four main sections. The first one explains the scope, in particular, what aspects of robotics for A&F are dealt with in the chapter. The second one discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the application of robotics to A&F. The third section is the core of the chapter, presenting twenty case studies that showcase (mostly) mature applications of robotics in various agricultural and forestry domains. The case studies are not meant to be comprehensive but instead to give the reader a general overview of how robotics has been applied to A&F in the last 10 years. The fourth section concludes the chapter with a discussion on specific improvements to current technology and paths to commercialization.
Ladybird: An intelligent farm robot for the vegetable industry
Author James Underwood, Calvin Hung, Suchet Bargoti, Mark Calleija, Robert Fitch, Juan Nieto, Salah Sukkarieh
Video ID : 305
This video showcases the Ladybird, an intelligent robot for the vegetable industry. Ladybird provides a flexible platform for sensing and automating commercial vegetable farms. The solar-electric powered vehicle has a flexible drive system that allows precise motion in potentially tight environments, and the platform geometry can be configured to suit different crop configurations. The vehicle autonomously traverses the farm, gathering data from a variety of sensors, including stereo vision, hyperspectral, thermal, and LIDAR. The data is processed to provide useful information for the management and optimization of the crop, including yield mapping, phenotyping, and disease and stress detection. Ladybird is equipped with a manipulator arm for a variety of mechanical tasks, including thinning, weeding (especially of herbicide-resistant weeds), spot spraying, foreign body removal and to support research towards automated harvesting.