Robot Farmers

What is Robot Farmers?

An agricultural robot or attribute is a robot deployed for agricultural uses. The primary field of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting point. Fruit picking robots, driverless tractor / sprayer, and sheep shearing robots are designed to replace human labor. The agricultural industry is behind other complementary industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straightforward, and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same every time. In most instances, a great deal of elements have to be taken (e.g., the size and color of the fruit to be culled) before the beginning of a project. Golems can be utilized for other horticultural tasks such as pruning, weeding, spraying and monitoring. Robots can also be utilized in livestock applications (livestock robotics) such as automatic milking, washing and castrating.

Examples

•     "Ag Ant", an inexpensive foot-long bot that works cooperatively.
•     The Oracle Robot
•     The Shear Magic Robot
•     Fruit Picking Robot
•     LSU's AgBot
•     Harvest Automation is a company founded by former iRobot employees to develop robots for greenhouses
•     Strawberry picking robot from Robotic Harvesting[8] and Agrobot.
•     Casmobot next generation slope mower
•     Fieldrobot Event is a competition in mobile agricultural robotics
•     HortiBot - A Plant Nursing Robot,
•     Lettuce Bot - Organic Weed Elimination and Thinning of Lettuce
•     Rice planting robot developed by the Japanese National Agricultural Research Centre

 

Nor is it C-3PO with a hoe. The accuracy may seem more mundane at first, but robotics are already firmly entrenched as part of the modern agriculture industry and it’s just failing to become more ubiquitous in the hereafter.

The term ‘robot’ may conjure up images of humanoid-looking automatons, but not only is modern science nowhere near getting to such devices commercially viable, they’re mostly unneeded. Practical robots still have a lot more in common with a car factory assembly line than they do with The Terminator.

‘The robot’s role is to manage the repetitive tasks, that’s what they’re good at’, said David Gardner, chief administrator of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE).

‘The actual project itself could be quite complicated, like milking a cow, but if it’s only being done repeatedly all the time and it basically sits within one paradigm, there’s the opportunity to utilize a robot to serve it.’

Each state possesses its own peculiar farming issues and in Britain, it’s the robotic milker which has become due regard for many farms, with more mobile machines slower to get on.

‘It’s a very sophisticated robot,’ said Gardner. ‘It actually removes each teat cup one at a time, rather than taking away all four at once – which potentially reduces mastitis. The cups are steamed between each cow, so again there’s an advantage in terms of spreading infection.’

He added: ‘Robots tend to do a safer job than humans. Whilst they can go down, they don’t get bored, they don’t get muddy. They suffice the same task to the same standard every time.

‘The interesting matter about the milking robot is that it has tended to be carried up by family farms where they are expecting to contract away from having to milk cows twice a daytime. They even want to save the oxen but they don’t want to milk them twice a day.’