In today's world, no field has remained untouched by the tech industry. And agriculture is no exception to this. Agriculture will soon be a high-tech industry. And robots in agriculture will play a vital role in this growth.
But why do we need robots? Robots in agriculture are the need of the hour to increase the productivity of agricultural operations. By the year 2050, the world's population is expected to grow from 7.7 billion to around 9.5 billion. So, the biggest challenge that humans will face in the upcoming years is to provide food to the entire population. That means we need to be highly productive in agriculture. Most of the countries are now facing a labor shortage as more and more people are now shifting from rural to urban areas. That results in a delay of agricultural operations. And that is why we would need the help of robots.
From harvesting to crop monitoring, robots can do it all. Therefore, several farmers are already taking advantage of robots for a number of activities.
How Robots Can Help The Farmers
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Harvesting and Picking
Harvesting crops is a labor intensive as well as time intensive process. There aren't always enough laborers available to do this work. Therefore, the process of harvesting can be done faster and with more accuracy by the help of robots.
But, the robots are still in the development phase. Crops like corn and wheat are easy to harvest. But there are other crops like strawberries or leafy vegetables which require manual dexterity or else they get bruised. Agrobot is one of such agri-tech companies who are creating robots and helping farmers overcome harvesting problems.
Agrobot has developed a robotic harvester with 24 arms which is specifically designed to pick strawberries. This robot first checks the ripeness level of the strawberries using some machine learning algorithm. After this, it makes a cut above the calyx and transfers the stems to harvest containers. This process ensures no contact with the fruit and prevents them from any harm.
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Another company named Abudant Robotics, have developed a vacuum robot to pick apples. This robot uses the computer vision and checks for the apples that are ripe. When identified the apple is sucked into the robot.
Crop Monitoring
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Monitoring vast agricultural land can be a difficult job. But, ground based robots as well as drones have come to the rescue of the farmers. Geo-mapping and sensors now provide huge amounts of information about the crops. Drones have now allowed to have an aerial view of the entire crops. These agricultural drones come with analysis software which provide information regarding crop's health, weeds, insects, and irrigation pattern. With the data that is produced, the farmers can then take all the necessary steps to maintain a healthy produce.
Using the ground based robots, as they are much closer to the crops, further detailed information about the health level, water level of crops can be generated.
American Robots is one of the companies working on an aerial imaging drone named Scout. Scout comes inside a weatherproof box, which opens when it takes flight. It gathers all the relevant information about the crop's health autonomously.
Weeding
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Weeds can create huge problems for a farmer. Farmers in conventional farming use chemicals to get rid of the weeds. But after persistent use these chemicals, certain weeds get resistant to these chemicals. Similarly, in organic farming, even after crop rotation, weeds find their way into the field. Therefore, weeding robots have become a necessity as they can autonomously, using AI, find weeds. Also, they help in promoting organic farming as the farmers won't need to be reliant on the chemicals to get rid of the weeds.
FarmWise, a San Francisco based startup has already raised around $14.5 million to work on a weed robot. With the help of computer vision technology, it picks out weeds from crops. The robot doesn't use any chemical instead handles weeds by picking them which makes it environment friendly.
Crop Seeding
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Crop seeding is another area where robots in agriculture can help the farmers. In traditional methods, seeds of various plants are spread randomly over a piece of land. This is not an efficient method as soil quality may differ at various points on the field. Therefore, autonomous robots with the capability of precision seeding can be used. These robots generate maps that show properties of the soil at various points in the field. Then the seeds can be precisely placed at the location where they have the best chances to grow into a healthy plant.
Automated drones can also be used. These are more common in the forest industries. Using drones for planting ensures speed, accuracy as well as areas which are not easily accessible can also be covered.
Preserving Water
There are robots that can help monitor the water levels in crops and tell the farmers if the crops require more water. This prevents wastage of excess water. One such robot is AquaSpy. It senses the amount of water that reaches the roots of a plant and tells the amount of water that would be required.
Conclusion
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We just saw how robots can help farmers and also promote organic farming by ensuring less usage of chemicals to maintain the crops. Using less chemicals would ensure that land remains fertile which ensures that our agricultural land area would not be decreased.
Robots in agriculture will play a much bigger role in the coming years. As technology advances we will see that farmers will be less dependent on labors and have more efficiency as well as less workload. And better agricultural management would be required to feed our ever growing population. This would only be possible by extensive use of robots. Several repetitive jobs would be lost but introduction of robots also means that several new jobs would be created.
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Great and useful work
ReplyDeleteAs I feel farmers are backbone of The country, Really i feel proud to read This Article.
ReplyDeleteThey indeed are. And we need to support them. Afterall, they feed the world.
DeleteIts an Epic idea and now as on growing technology in ever industry their is necessity of robots for great precision work and loss of waste..
ReplyDeleteI too feel the same. Humans shall put minds on more development and prosperity and use robots and related technology for basic yet essential works in near future...
DeleteRobots would become a necessity in future and delaying their introduction will only cause more harm than gain.
Delete