The first issue that arises when you shift from human labor to mechanical labor is energy source. After all, what good is a design, if there is not sufficient power to run the robot? While humans can gain energy through food, sleep, and other activities, robots must have an electrical power source. To sway toward a more environmentally suitable design, robots should make use of solar, wind, water based, and other natural forms of energy. Already, the University of Illinois has developed a weeding robot that, unlike Lukas, runs on solar power (shown right) [10].

Data Collection and Response

The next problem to deal with when designing rural robots is how the mechanism collects and responds to certain situations. Just as skilled farmers take into account the weather, season, and plant conditions, robots must analyze the same factors when performing their tasks.

In the future, weather stations may relay information to the agricultural robots that water and harvest plants. Robots will then correctly know when to plant which crop because they will be informed of the season, temperatures, cloudiness, and other abiotic factors. With regards to disease detection, robots can use methods similar to pollen detection used by meteorological centers to identify harmful microscopic organisms and viruses. Photographic methods like those used by Lukas have already proven to be accurate in perceiving and eliminating weeds [6]. On a similar note, fruit picking robots could also develop ethylene level detection because ethylene is a key chemical in determining the ripening of fruit. As a whole, if robots have such sufficient capabilities, they will surely remove human labor costs and hence allow cheaper production.