Harvesting
- Automated Harvesters are becoming more common in the farming world.
- Tractors may be manipulated through GPS technology.
- Tractors may be manipulated through a “drone” feature which allows one operator to control multiple harvesters at one time. (technovelgy.com)
- “Fruit Picking Robots”
- These robots use video image capturing to distinguish between the fruit and the leaves. (kernow.curtin.edu.au)
- The robot arm is wrapped in rubber so as to deplete the worry of damaging fruit. (kernow.curtin.edu.au)
- Robotics is implemented in the area of weed-picking so as to minimize the tedious duty of the farmer to separate the weed from the crop by hand.
- Infrared technology is common in allowing the robot to examine the rows of crops and determine the location of weeds. (innovations-report.com)
- The robots also use infrared technology to analyze the color and form of plants to determine which are not weeds. (innovations-report.com)
Livestock
- Sheep-sheering technology is underway for the norm in livestock agriculture. (robotics.utexas.edu)
- The sheep is held by clamps in order to keep it still for sheering.
- Sensors are used to keep the sheep’s skin safe from the blades.
- In order to maintain conditional homeostasis for animal living quarters, computers designed for the task are used. (agribotics.com)
- Common cow-milking technology is efficient in eliminating man-power.
Pest Control
- “Micro spraying” is a relatively new technique in which a field robot sprays a restrained amount of repellent chemical onto the crop area. (age.uiuc.edu)
- Field robots may also be configured to provide an overview of the crops in cultivation to determine the necessities of the crops using sensory vision or video. (age.uiuc.edu)
- Robots may use sensors to determine the level of insect infestation as a part of its overview task. (age.uiuc.edu)
- Robots may use cameras to determine the level of weed growth around the crop area. (age.uiuc.edu)
- Soil Sensors are in the process of becoming more widely used as they are an arrangement designed as a part of the robot to detect disease.
Examples of Current Robots Which Adhere to the Above Tasks
- AgBo by: Yoshi Nagasaka (age.uiuc.edu)
- Uses above mentioned sensory vision.
- Remote control capabilities
- May use small wheels for traversing dry soil, or larger wheels for traversing damper soil.
- AgTracker by: Matthias Kasten (age.uiuc.edu)
- Uses infrared technology to maneuver and handle similar tasks to the AgBo.
- Uses a microcontroller to cope with remote control interfacing. (age.uiuc.edu)
- AgAnt (age.uiuc.edu)
- Small robot meant to work in groups of others of its kind.
- These robots are capable of scouting out weeds for “food” and alerting the other robots of the whereabouts of the weeds so as to increase the amount of “food” eaten and thereby eliminate as much weed growth as possible. (age.uiuc.edu)
- A larger version of the AgAnt is the AgGiant (age.uiuc.edu)
- Demeter Automated Harvester (technovelgy.com)
- Uses above mentioned “drone feature” to allow one operator to run a number of Demeter’s.
- May be run directly by the farmer, but also contains a “cruise control” to limit manual management.
- The Oracle and The Sheer Magic Robot by: The University Of Western Australia (kernow.curtin.edu.au)
- These automated sheep-sheering robots use the above advantages of modern-day sheep-sheering technology.
- These robots are preprogrammed with an algorithm for gaining a rough model of an average sheep in order to determine relative positioning of the robot arm over the sheep skin.
