Automation in Agricultural Equipment and Technology

 Automation in Agricultural Equipment and Technology

With a predicted global population exceeding 10 Billion by 2060, the agricultural sector is facing the challenge of feeding the increasing population while managing the rapidly depleting resources efficiently and mitigating the climatic change at the same time. With the aim of increasing the operational efficiency, the use of machinery for land preparation, harvesting and processing increased during the twentieth century. With the dawn of the twenty first century, the interest has shifted towards automation, to save human labour and to ensure higher efficiency in energy utilization.

Within the global context, especially when it comes to the developed countries, the concept of automation is nothing new within the numerous branches of agriculture, including horticulture, aquaculture and animal husbandry. Temperature sensors, sensors for detecting moisture levels, automated sprinkler systems are commonly used in protected cultures. Similarly, sensors are used to monitor the temperature, pH levels and Oxygen contents of indoor fresh water aquariums. In intensively managed livestock farms where animals are raised indoors, automated technologies help in providing them with optimum living conditions. Linking of those sensors and other appliances forming automated networks is generally referred to as IoT (Internet of Things).
However, the applications of automation are not necessarily limited to protected cultures and intensive farming. Automation is an effective solution for most of the practical difficulties faced in managing labour and other resources in large scale farms and plantations. Automation could be applied in land preparation, seeding and planting, aftercare operations, harvesting and even post harvest operations. In his key note report for the 21st Annual Meeting Bologna, EIMA International, Nov 13-14, 2010 (Computer vision – A versatile technology in automation of agriculture machinery) Dr Jens Moller points out that high accuracy in field operations is a prerequisite to optimize output and quality of the crops, as well as minimising the production cost. The same report shows on how various technologies of computer vision such as 2D colour computer vision and 3D Stereo vision could be combined with farm machinery such as tractors, harvesters and rotary weeders. Use of Global Positioning Systems to help the operator navigate the machine precisely along rows of crops could contribute to help the stress levels of the operator and increase the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the process while saving time and money. With the increase of attention paid towards using less agrochemical, use of techniques such as Patch weeding, where computer vision is used to identify regions with higher abundance of weeds and automated sprayers are used to spray herbicides only to those areas, reduce the amount of herbicides used while suppressing the weed growth effectively. Similarly, computer vision could be useful in guiding rotary weeders to such places under an automated system, with the aid of technologies such as optimal path planning. It is important to note that, under the traditional system, especially in rice fields, herbicides are applied uniformly to the entire field, which is not only ineffective, but needs a higher amount of herbicides, causing a higher level of pollution.

Another research team from India points out that advanced technologies computer vision could in fact, be more reliable than human vision when it comes to identifying plant diseases and pest damages, especially within the context of South Asian countries such as India where the farming community mainly consists of the elderly generation who face vision problems with age. Mobile apps such as Plantix are popular among the agriculturalists since they offer advices on remedial measure in addition to identifying the disease or the pest.

Thermal imaging is another technology that could be used to identify the soil moisture levels and apply irrigation selectively, especially in regions where water is a limited resource.
Traditional method of broadcasting seeds results in seed wastages and row seeding is another labour intensive and time consuming process where automation is already being practiced. Inventors are focussing on developing semi automated seeders that allow the operator to select the distance between consecutive rows and seeds, the number of seeds per hole and the depth of holes according to the specific recommendations. Such measures prevent unnecessary wastages while eliminating thinning out requirements and facilitating after care operations.

Researchers are also focussing on developing robotic harvesters which could selectively identify crops (especially fruits) of harvestable quality without damaging the product.

Post harvest processing and quality assurance is another area of agriculture which could be benefitted by automation.

With the recent developments of information and communication technology, automation allows you to manage the daily operations of your greenhouse or aquarium just by tapping on your smart phone while sitting comfortably at an office miles away. In Sri Lanka, Dialog telecommunication network has taken the first step to introduce the concept of automation to the local farmers by launching the “Govi Mithuru” mobile advisory service.

Among the numerous advantages mentioned above and the promise of uplifting the economy in the long run, complete automation of agricultural technologies and equipment gives rise to several concerns within the Sri Lankan context. In addition to the high cost of initiation which is unaffordable to the majority of smallholder farmers, the need of specialized technical knowledge for handling the equipments might discourage the farmers from adopting such technologies. When questioned whether automation of labour intensive tasks would cause the loss of livelihoods for unskilled farm labourers, Mr Charitha Ratwatte, the Head of Group Sustainability, Dialog Axiata PLC, pointed out that the majority of smallholder farms are poorly managed due to the lack of labour for tasks such as weeding. Automation, while solving the labour crisis will make farming an interesting part time occupation for the younger generation. On the other hand it will create more employment opportunities for skilled labour in relation to designing, manufacturing and operating such devices. The Policy makers can make the benefits more accessible for the smallholders and researchers by introducing financing schemes and grants. Hopefully, when the technologies become more popular, it would gradually be more affordable and accessible to the average farmer.

References
(Edan Y., Han S., Kondo N. (2009) Automation in Agriculture. In: Nof S. (eds) Springer Handbook of Automation. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78831-7_63)

K. Sreeram, R. S. Kumar, S. V. Bhagavath, K. Muthumeenakshi and S. Radha, "Smart farming—A prototype for field monitoring and automation in agriculture," 2017 International Conference on Wireless Communications, Signal Processing and Networking (WiSPNET), Chennai, India, 2017, pp. 2189-2193, doi: 10.1109/WiSPNET.2017.8300148.
E R Guzueva et al 2020 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 421 022047
J. Möller
Computer vision – a versatile technology in automation of agriculture machinery. 21st Annual Meeting Bologna
EIMA International (2010), pp. 1-16