Agricultural robots

From Future

http://www.primidi.com/images/lukas_in_the_fields.jpg

There is still significant manual labour in agriculture, meaning that in developed countries labour contributes significantly to costs. At the same time, developed countries are subsidising national agriculture for reasons of food security. These two factors justify continuous attempts to automate more and more functions of the agricultural (and horticurtural) production.

Robotics is a logical direction to take this. The work environment is relatively stable (although less so than at a factory), the tasks are relatively simple and are usually separate. This means that even though robotics for agriculture is not trivial, it is quite realistic to expect near-term developments and tech deployment in this field.

Initially most robots would perform a single function, such as removing weeds (Lukas) or picking fruits [1], but eventually universal robots with a miriad of different fixings and separate programs will be developed.

Agricultural robots may also be used in Hydroponics someday.

The NISTEP report places the use agricultural robots in 2013-2014.