Agricultural Robotics: Unmanned Robotic Service Units in Agricultural Tasks

TLDR

Precision agriculture increasingly relies on robotics, with growing investment and research, and autonomous vehicles are expected to become central to future precision farming operations. The study aims to advance agricultural robotics beyond merely applying robotics technologies to agriculture. Current agricultural vehicles for tasks such as weed detection, agrochemical dispersal, terrain leveling, and irrigation are predominantly manned. Autonomous vehicles enable continuous field supervision by autonomously acquiring environmental data and executing tasks accordingly.

Abstract

The application of agricultural machinery in precision agriculture has experienced an increase in investment and research due to the use of robotics applications in the machinery design and task executions. Precision autonomous farming is the operation, guidance, and control of autonomous machines to carry out agricultural tasks. It motivates agricultural robotics. It is expected that, in the near future, autonomous vehicles will be at the heart of all precision agriculture applications [1]. The goal of agricultural robotics is more than just the application of robotics technologies to agriculture. Currently, most of the automatic agricultural vehicles used for weed detection, agrochemical dispersal, terrain leveling, irrigation, etc. are manned. An autonomous performance of such vehicles will allow for the continuous supervision of the field, since information regarding the environment can be autonomously acquired, and the vehicle can then perform its task accordingly.