Automation in agricultural equipment and Technology

 Automation in agricultural equipment and Technology

Agriculture is a science of producing food and many other useful products by cultivating plants and growing domestic livestock. This agriculture is undergoing rapid changes caused by numerous factors and technological developments and trends. This is known as the smart farming. This technology makes agriculture more efficient and automates the crop and livestock production and it doesn’t require the presence of a human to manage the agricultural processes.

Traditional farming methods have some limitations. The labor shortage is one of the major problems because it is hard to find a teenager who dreams to become a farmer. Most people prefer to move to urban lifestyle. And the agricultural practices also changed over the last decade, which makes difficult to train the workers. Consumer preferences and demand for the food is increased, because consumer all over the world are carving for the junk foods, snacks. So, farmer has the responsibility to provide a large number of crops to meet the new demands of the customers. So, automation in farming will solve these issues and make it possible to produce more and more high-quality products with less manpower.

There is a lot of agricultural equipment is used in the smart farming. For the harvesting purpose, Agrobot is used for harvesting strawberries. These types of robots should be gentle when harvesting the products. Like this robot, Abundant Robotics company developed a robot for harvesting apples. This robot uses vacuum to pull apples from the branch. So, the damage rate is comparatively less when using a robot with claw or hand-like graspers. Autonomous tractors are another type of equipment in the farming industry. Rabbit Tractor is used for harvesting purposes that will reduce the labor cost as well as it increases the efficiency across farming operations and increase the yield. Some of the autonomous tractors have driverless technology and some tractors need drivers to control the tractors. Also, the robots are used for the seeding and weeding. Seeding robots target specific types of crops and it can reduce the labor cost and mundane tasks on the farm. In weeding, this robotic system can be incredibly accurate and reduce pesticide usage by 90% with computer vision. Some autonomous machines are used in spraying herbicides only where needed; this gives farmers a way to prevent herbicide resistance weeds. The company ecoRobotix produces a completely autonomous weeding robot for an economical weeding of row crows, meadows and intercropping cultures.

Drones are also used in smart farming to monitor the conditions remotely and applying fertilizers. Using drones brings some benefits like, it is quickly and cost effectively identify the problems with infrared analysis. So, the farmers can diagnose the issues earlier. American Robotics developed an autonomous robot with an autonomous drones, base stations and analytics platforms. Like this, PrecisionHawk is one of the drone companies that offer autonomous drones to farmers with the combined packages including robotic hardware and analysis software. So, the farmer can move the drone above the field and use the software via a smartphone and can view the field in real-time. Autonomous devices are used in fertilizing and irrigation also. Some robots can reduce the amount of wastage water by targeting specific plants which needed water. Ground robots can automatically navigate between the rows of the crops and pour water directly to the base of the plants. There are some robots that are used for the thinning and pruning processes in the farm. Wall-Ye is a robot that can able to prune grapevines. LettuceBot is a robot used for the thinning process. It uses computer vision to identify and decides which plant to keep and which to remove. Not only in farming, some robots are used in livestock cultivation also. There are some robots or autonomous devices that are used in dairy farms in the milking process.

So, automation in agricultural equipment and technology brings some benefits. Labor efficiency is one of the main advantages of farm automation. It can reduce labor cost and increase efficiency. And these usages of equipment increase the productivity in a less period of time. By using autonomous devices, we can reduce the amount of water wastage and can reduce the number of pesticides as these devices predict the needed amount of water and pesticides. Still, there are some limitations in automation in agriculture. The cost for affording the robots or devices is high and also the maintenance cost will be also high. So, it will be a huge barrier for the farmers to enter into smart farming. And some farmers face technical issues because they haven’t enough knowledge of these new technologies. Worker displacement is also a considerable disadvantage. The workers’ job has been taken over by a machine, and it causes stress to those workers.
Finally, these disadvantages aside, if we used this technology wisely and effectively, can yield great opportunities in the future where humans can enjoy a better way of life. Automation technologies contribute to the social and economic growth in farming and it leads to the great victory in future.

References
E R Guzueva, T G Vezirov, D K Beybalaeva, A A Batukaev, Kh G Chaplaev, “The impact of automation of agriculture on the digital economy”, IOP Conference series, Volume 421, 2020.

Mohd Saiful Azimi Mahmud, Mohamad Shukri Zainal Abidin, Abioye Abiodun Emmanuel, Hameedah Sahib Hasan, “Robotics and Automation in Agriculture: Present and Future Applications”, Applications of Modelling and Simulation, An Open Access Journal, Volume 4, ISSN 2600-8084.

Yael Edan, Shufeng Han, Naoshi Kondo, “Automation in Agriculture”, Springer Handbook of Automation.

Wikipedia

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