Agricultural robot

An agricultural robot or agribot is a robot deployed for agricultural purposes.

Amazone BoniRob autonomous field robot prototype

The main area of application of robots in agriculture is at the harvesting stage. Fruit picking robots, driverless tractor / sprayer, and sheep shearing robots are designed to replace human labour. The agricultural industry is behind other complementary industries in using robots because the sort of jobs involved in agriculture are not straightforward, and many repetitive tasks are not exactly the same every time. In most cases, a lot of factors have to be considered (e.g., the size and colour of the fruit to be picked) before the commencement of a task. Robots can be used for other horticultural tasks such as pruning, weeding, spraying and monitoring.

Livestock robotics

A Lely Astronaut milking robot (AMS)

Robots can also be used in livestock applications (livestock robotics) such as milking, washing and castrating.

Examples

• "Ag Ant", an inexpensive foot-long bot that works cooperatively.
• The Oracle Robot
• The Shear Magic Robot
• Fruit Picking Robot
• LSU's AgBot
• Harvest Automation is a company founded by former iRobot employees to develop robots for greenhouses
• Strawberry picking robot from Robotic Harvesting and Agrobot.
• Casmobot next generation slope mower
• Fieldrobot Event is an competition in mobile agricultural robotics
• HortiBot - A Plant Nursing Robot ,
• Down on the Farm, Will Robots Replace Immigrant Labor?

See also

• Future of robotics

External links

Media related to Agricultural robots at Wikimedia Commons