Agricultural Robots — Applications and Economic Perspectives

Abstract

For many years robotic systems have been widely used for industrial production and in warehouses, where a controlled environment can be guaranteed. In agriculture and forestry, research into driverless vehicles has been a vision initiated in the early 1960's with basic research on projects on automatic steered systems and autonomous tractors Recently, the development of robotic systems in agriculture has experienced an increased interest, which has led many experts to explore the possibilities to develop more rational and adaptable vehicles based on a behavioural approach. A combined application of new sensor systems, communication technologies, positioning systems (GPS) and geographical information systems (GIS) have enabled researchers to develop new autonomous vehicles for high value crops in the agriculture and horticulture soctor, as well as for landscape management. Several autonomous prototypes have been described for orchards and horticultural crops, such as oranges Moreover, automated systems for site specific irrigation based on real time climatic conditions have been described for high value crops (e.g. In addition we have seen automated systems for animal production in indoor environments such as automated feeding and cleaning. In the open and outdoor environment, which will be the focus here, robotic and autonomous systems are more complex to develop -mainly because of safety issues. The robots safety system would have to be reliable enough for it to operate autonomously and unattended. It is relatively costly to develop safety systems if the vehicle has to be completely autonomous. In principle, they can work 24 hours a day but if a robot has to be attended then the time is limited by the person. In this matter different scenarios and degrees for autonomy have been investigated depending on the task to be carried out. Concepts have been initiated to investigate if small autonomous machines would be more www.intechopen.com