Agricultural robots accelerate agriculture from mechanization to intelligence

[ China Agricultural Machinery Industry News ] As China promotes the development of the robot industry in an all-round way, the process of agricultural intelligence is accelerating. In the foreseeable future, China's agriculture is expected to move rapidly from mechanization to intelligence, and use the technological bonus of agricultural robots to realize the ecological creation of smart agriculture.

Agricultural robots accelerate agriculture from mechanization to intelligence

With the influence of objective environmental factors and the rapid improvement of robotics technology, the global agricultural sector is welcoming the peak of intelligent development. The agricultural robots that are “out of the box” are enviable, and China has begun a historical journey from agricultural mechanization to agricultural intelligence.

In recent years, with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, the contradiction between the surge in population and limited cultivated land has intensified, global warming, frequent extreme weather and other problems have emerged, and global agriculture is facing extremely severe tests. Both developed and developing countries are hoping that robotics can drive change in agriculture. As a result, agricultural robots began to enter an accelerated development period.

In fact, compared with industrial robots or robots in other fields, the working environment of agricultural robots is changeable, and the non-structural environment is the main task, and the task is extremely challenging. Therefore, in general, agricultural robots require far more intelligence than other fields of robots.

Before the 21st century, agricultural robots were mechanical and electrical automation equipment. After the 21st century, they added automation equipment such as artificial intelligence and machine vision. The “Robot+” agricultural model is mainly supported by artificial intelligence robot technology. The information technology is integrated, and information exchange and communication are carried out through means of sensory recognition, intelligent analysis, automatic control and flexible operation to realize intelligent identification and positioning. The functions of tracking, monitoring and management will eventually advance the standardization and standardization of agriculture.

At present, the development of agricultural robots is accelerating and gradually expanding into sub-sectors. Countries are constantly turning off “customized” robots to serve agricultural production and management.

In the field of agricultural crop monitoring, a team led by Professor Stephen P. Long of the University of Illinois developed a new robot. This agricultural robot uses a combination of GPS and laptop to guide the crawler wheels between plant rows.

The robot is equipped with a hyperspectral, high-definition thermal imaging camera, weather monitor and pulsed laser scanner sensor. These devices allow it to collect phenotypic data on plant stem diameter, height and leaf area, as well as crop environmental conditions such as temperature and soil moisture. The data it collects is stored on the robot's own integrated computer, which is then transferred to the researcher's laptop. They can then use this information to build a 3D computer model for each plant to predict its growth and development, thereby estimating the yield of the individual plant and the entire crop.

Coincidentally, the team of researchers at Georgia Tech recently developed a creative robot that is also used for crop monitoring. It is understood that the design of this robot is inspired by the sloth, the developer gave the robot a mighty name called "Taishan."

According to reports, "Taishan"'s main job is to monitor the growth of crops through a built-in camera. The claws made with 3D printing technology are very sensitive, and can climb on parallel cables to take photos of plants from various angles. . Georgian Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Rogers said they are trying to continue to optimize the design of "Taishan" to make it more energy efficient, just like a real sloth. In addition, according to China Intelligent Manufacturing Network, in order to enable "Taishan" to maintain 24 hours of uninterrupted detection capability, the R&D team also considers using solar energy to power it, so there is no need to charge or refuel.

In other countries, Australia has developed a farm robot, the “SwagBot”, which grazes livestock and drags out vehicles that are trapped in the mud. The UK has released an agricultural harvesting robot that collects the speed of broccoli as human. Six times that, it has already been put into use; a French company has recently developed a new agricultural robot, the Dino weeding robot, which is specially used for large-scale vegetable cultivation. Dino is equipped with RTK (Real-Time Dynamics) GPS and vision cameras that can flip the clods to remove weeds without harming nearby crops. At the same time, it is known as a "multi-function robot" so it can also be used for sowing.

In the global agricultural robot research, Japan has concentrated its research efforts and jointly implemented development plans, and currently ranks first in the world. As early as 1995, the number of private agricultural machinery manufacturers involved in the daily research reached 41. The research object is not only agricultural machinery, but also the development of production materials such as fertilizers and pesticides related to mechanization efficiency. The research topics are related to vegetables, dry paddy fields, livestock and fruit trees.

Compared with foreign countries, China's agricultural robot research and development is still in its infancy. China's agricultural robots started late, and in the mid-1990s, the development of agricultural robot technology began in China. At present, the agricultural robots that have been developed in China include: tilling robots, weeding robots, fertilizing robots, spraying robots, vegetable grafting robots, harvesting robots, and picking robots.