AGRICULTURAL ROBOTS: NEW HOPE FOR AGRIBUSINESS
What are agricultural robots?
The robot is a machine that is automatically operated and helps to reduce the heavy work of human. These days the robots are used in various fields to speed up the work, perform dangerous task. The agricultural robot was first invented by Eli Whitney in the year of 1974. Agricultural robots are the robots used to perform the agricultural activities like weed control, detecting the diseases, application of herbicides and pesticides at the right concentrations and performing at high speed reducing the manual labor.
Types of Agricultural robots-
There are different types of robots which are used in agriculture like robot for weed control, demeter, forester robot, fruit picking robot.
Demeter :
Demeter is a robot which is used as a harvester. Demeter has a camera fixed to it which helps to detect the crops that need to be cut. Broad sensors are used in the operation of the demeter.
Weed Controller :
weed controller is a robot that is developed to perform the task of removing or completely destroying the weeds. They help to remove the weeds in the crops that are grown in rows. They identify the weeds with the help of color photography. Some robots produce weed maps for identifying the weed plant
Forester robot :
Forester robot is used for cutting the wood, pruning and tending the trees and for harvesting. Forest robot consists of jaws and axes to remove the branches.
Fruit picking robot :
Fruit picking robot helps to pick the fruits from the trees. It uses video image capturing to distinguish the fruits and leaves and pick only fruits.
Robot in Horticulture :
In horticulture robots are used to cut the grass in the lawn. They work based on rechargeable batteries.
Uses of Agricultural robots :
• The robots work continuously and do not need a time off as they do not get sick.
• They can collect the soil samples and also perform activities like spraying pesticides, fertilizers, mowing .
• They can be used to detect the diseases and pests and identify the weeds with the help of sensors and cameras.
• They can be used for seed sowing as they can locate the places where seeds are not sown and also place the seed at the correct depth where the seed can absorb right amount of light.
• They can be used for fruit picking and harvesting and can replace heavy machines for doing the work.
The agricultural robots can be helpful to agribusiness as they reduce the workload for farmers. They reduce the cost of cultivation by reducing the high cost on labour. The crop production is done better with the help of these small machines. They can produce the high quality products as they can detect the colour, size shape and firmness of the economic produce. So these agricultural robots are beneficial to the agribusiness even though there may be some drawbacks.