Botball 2007 Research Project
 

Team 07-0129:
  Lockheed Martin
  Exploring Program
  Team 1
 
Author:
 
Contents:
 
Related Sites:



Future Direction
The aim of robots in agriculture is to increase crop yield and improve the quality of production. Humans can only work for so many hours a day, but autonomous robots never stop running if given a never ending supply of energy. Whereas more farmers are needed to tend a greater area of cropland, only a few trained personnel are needed to maintain a large group of robots. If workers are too tired or simply find their tasks too difficult or tedious, they might perform their jobs poorly. Robots on the other hand perform the same task the same way over many repetitions. As a result, the same quality of work is maintained.  In the future, rural robots will even vary how they perform a certain task with correspondence to changing factors like weather [14].

But then why is greater food production needed in the first place? Today, many people across the globe are suffering from hunger. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, “over 30 million people are going hungry on a regular basis” and “the explosion of hunger has outstripped the ability of existing hunger relief programs, both governmental and private, to satisfy this crucial need” [9]. By merely increasing crop yield, however, there will be a higher food surplus that can be delivered to areas that need it. Evidently, robots which achieve this goal will benefit the entire world in the years to come.

Additionally, when manned long term space flights are possible, food will need to be grown in space when deliveries from Earth are not feasible. Robots seem the best solution to grow and tend key crops, so that astronomers, already busy with mission objectives, do not have to take on an additional complex task. Already, NASA has funded an Ohio State University research team to develop a tomato harvesting robot [Current Technology].
 [15]

 
    Copyright 2007 Explorer Post 1010