Review of agriculture robotics: Practicality and feasibility

Abstract

Concerns over food security have risen sharply in recent years. The growing human population, coupled with the shrinking agriculture resources, caused many governments and international conglomerates around the world to seek new ways to improve agriculture efficiency. This has lead to increased interest, and spending, in Agriculture Robotics. In Part 1 of this work, research activities on agriculture robotics were reviewed, with many showing promising results. However, agriculture robots remain experimental and far from being implemented on large operational scales. This paper investigates the possible reasons for this phenomena, by continuing the review of agriculture robots, only this time focusing on practicality and feasibility. Upon extensive review and analysis, the authors concluded that practical agriculture robots rely not only on advances in robotics, but also on the presence of a support infrastructure. This infrastructure encompasses all services and technologies needed by agriculture robots while in operation, this include a reliable wireless connection, an effective framework for Human Robot Interaction (HRI) between robots and agriculture workers, and a framework for software sharing and re-use. Without such infrastructure being in place, agriculture robots, no matter how advanced in design they could be, would remain impractical and infeasible. However, for many organizations, the technological and monitory costs of establishing such infrastructure could be very prohibitive, which renders agriculture robots uneconomical and enviable. Therefore, the paper concludes that the key to practical agriculture robotics is to find a novel, cost-effective, and a reliable approach to develop the support infrastructure needed for agriculture robots. © 2016 IEEE.