Cropping and harvesting robots

The use of robotics for cropping and harvesting in agriculture. This includes navigation and guidance, including transportation and autonomous tractors, transplantation and seedling systems, pruning and thinning, weed control and disease monitoring, harvesting, and traceability and geo-positioning. Mechanisation has been used for many decades in agriculture and has provided significant benefits for agricultural productivity. Recently, there have been considerable advances towards full automation of cropping and harvesting, which has the potential to increase agricultural productivity by increasing efficiency, reliability and precision, and reducing the need for human intervention. For example, ‘soft grasp’ technology has recently developed to the point where it can be used to successfully harvest agricultural produce without damage. While full automation of agriculture activities is hampered by the dynamic and unstructured environment of field farming, automation in controlled environment farming is easier and is progressing more rapidly than automation in the field.