Prospects for Robots in Precision Agriculture

Abstract

In this paper the authors discuss the prospects of robots in agriculture. According to the authors, the most challenging area of agriculture is the use of robots in the technology of Precision Agriculture (or Target Farming). The main idea of this technology is fertilization of the soil in accordance with the actual fecundity level of each specific area of a field (in contrast to the widely accepted field fertilization according to the average fecundity level of the overall field). The advantages of the Precision Agriculture technology are higher productivity level and better ecology of the food produced and of the field used for food production. In such case this technology consists of four main components: 1. Remote sensing of the soil for estimation of its actual fecundity level; 2. Calculation of the amount of the fertilizers needed for each part of the field; 3. Development of new agricultural machinery; 4. Precision navigation systems for the agricultural machinery. The authors believe that most of these components (except component 2) are typical robotics tasks. Within this paper they discuss various approaches to realization of these components, their advantages and drawbacks. The concluding part of the paper presents the preliminary results of application of the Precision Agriculture technology in the Russian Federation. According to the experimental tests performed by the State Research Institute for Agrochemistry, the winter wheat production increased by 3 metric centners per hectare in Voronezh Region. This covered all the costs involved in the Precision Agriculture project within one year. The last paragraph of the paper is devoted to the key players in this area of research in Russia.