Human–Robot Collaboration in Modern Agriculture: A Review of the Current Research Landscape

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an increased utilization of robotics systems in agricultural settings. While fully autonomous farming holds great potential, most systems fall short of meeting the demands of present‐day agricultural operations. The use of human labor or teleoperated robots is also limited due to the physiological constraints of humans and the shortcomings of interfaces used to control robots. To harness the strengths of autonomous capabilities and endurance of robots, as well as the decision‐making capabilities of humans, human–robot collaboration (HRC) has emerged as a viable approach. By identifying the various applications of HRC in current research and the infrastructure employed to develop them, interested parties seeking to utilize collaborative robotics in agriculture can gain a better understanding of the possibilities and challenges they may encounter. In this review, an overview of existing HRC applications in the agricultural domain is provided. Additionally, general trends and weaknesses are identified within the research corpus. This review serves as a presentation of the state‐of‐the‐art research of HRC in agriculture for professionals considering the adoption of HRC. Robotics engineers can utilize this review as a resource for easily accessing information on the hardware, software, and algorithms employed in building HRC systems for agriculture.