Globally efficient, high-yield and precision agriculture is a keystone of modern civilization. With the changing generations, agricultural practices have taken a new shape, but one thing remained constant was the need for more specialized, bigger and autonomous agricultural machinery. The advent of robotics has eased the work of farmers and increased efficiency. The scope of application of robotics spreads from seeding to weeding to harvesting. This innovative robotics is currently undergoing R&D requiring huge investments from top players in the market. Based on these developments, the agriculture industry & in particular precision agriculture market can expect huge developments in the production & quality across the world over the period of next 10 years. Also, the penetration of IoT in agriculture market has boosted the investment and R&D activities in the development & deployment of agriculture robots.
Agriculture Industry Scenario: 2017
Global agriculture industry is witnessed to be growing but at a slow pace owing to two major facts i.e. the decline in population growth & high rate of food consumption which has been achieved by several countries. In the future, though the demand for food is expected to grow at a slow rate, however in the developing countries due to high imports & low domestic production, food security will still remain a concern. Moreover, in the world of tomorrow, sufficient food availability is no longer self-evident. The challenge would be to meet the supply shortage as in the developing countries such as India the youth population is shifting towards a better lifestyle rather than adopting agriculture business. As a result agriculture operation might get delayed specifically in peak seasons due to lack of agriculture labour.
Robotics in Agriculture Industry Scenario: 2017
The robotics industry is witnessing a booming period in the manufacturing industry and agriculture sector is anticipated to be next in line. The global agricultural robots market in 2016 is estimated at USD 3.5 billion in 2016. The increasing adoption of robots in precision agriculture is propelling the demand for advanced and innovative robots. Thus the global agriculture robot market is anticipated to reach a market size of USD 17.0 billion by 2024. Mankind is on the way of solving the problem of hunger. Major trends in the creation of robots for agriculture are aimed at the transition from technical operations to the implementation of the entire production process; minimization of human labour costs; preservation of human health; a reduction of the consumption of natural resources; a reduction of environmental damage.
The agriculture practices are becoming autonomous and with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and online databases, the data collected is helping to improve the efficiency and understanding the problems & solutions in agriculture which wasn’t possible for humans. Hence, agriculture robots have increased production by minimizing the cost, time and energy.
Not only the ground-based technology is flourishing but the UAV (Unmanned Air Vehicles) like drones have increasing adoption for surveillance & monitoring of the farms. It has wide application in the huge farms such as in US, South America & Japan. Unlike US, in Europe, the adoption of drones is particularly low due to smaller field holdings and also because of safety concerns that might pop up with the profusion of small aircraft filing the sky.
As per the industry experts, technology has been the key to increase the farm productivity and thus with the futuristic vision there will be an increasing application of robots. In the field of dairy farming, there is a high application of milking machines, which can milk many cows at the same time. Whereas, the arable & vegetable farmers are inclining towards the use of GPS system for crop mapping, yield monitoring and acquiring weed related data, which is directly impacting the increase in productivity.
Role of Government in Adoption of Agriculture Robots
The new technologies are changing the perspective of government & other stakeholders towards agriculture in the hope of solving food scarcity & hunger issues across the globe. The government are witnessed to be facing the problems of climate change, population pressure and natural resources shortage and thus these will lead the government to establish new & advanced agricultural practices & use of technologies to make up ‘Agriculture 4.0’. The government are open with two paths of policies such that traditional industry facilitator & promoter approach (bottom-up approach), or targeted goal-oriented effort (top-down approach).
Examples Quoting Government Engagement in Adoption & Promoting of Agriculture Robots
Various government across the world have started to see the bright future of the agriculture sector with the adoption of robots. This understanding has developed either due to the risk of staying behind in this new revolution or due to positive outlook towards the new wave. In 2017, France government had announced an accelerator program “RobAgri”. The idea behind this program is to “Intensify the conception, validation, and dissemination of tomorrow’s robots“. RobAgri accounts for 50 public & private stakeholders to deploy robotics system for farmers. RobAgri is also entering into a partnership with Naio Technologies to organize annual convention based on agriculture robotics.
In the U.K., the government has come up with “agri-tech” strategy in 2014, to develop and commercialize the advanced agricultural technologies. Nearly 43% of the total funding was assigned to commercialize new technologies and rest to be spent for the development of centres for the purpose of innovating farm technologies for exports.
Top Companies Innovations & Contributions in Global Agriculture Robot Market
Blue River Technology: The company has been awarded the with most innovative robotics company in 2017. The company is looking out to redefine agricultural practices through the use of robotics. The company has designed ‘See & Spray’ machine that identifies the weeds and precisely sprays the herbicides such that the useful plants are not affected by the herbicide.
Abundant Robotics: This Company has brought revolution in the apple industry with the development of self-driving cars that pulls only the ripe apples from the branches through vacuum suction, without damaging the unripe apples & the complete orchard. The company is pushing itself to bring out a similar solution for other fruit industries.
Iron Ox: This Company has developed a greenhouse where robots do the lettuce farming using the natural energy from the sun. The complete process is automated & regulated by the robots from seeding to watering, without the use of pesticides and GM seeds. Further, the company is also thriving to develop the AI of this robotics, in order to assess the plant disease at an early stage. Such developments will lead to the establishment of an intelligent & efficient greenhouse farming system at much higher speed & accuracy than the human beings.
Harvest CROO Robotics: On the backdrop of increasing shortage of farmers, the Company has manufactured innovative robotic strawberry picker. This has reduced the high labour cost, reduced time & energy used in picking and increased the high-quality strawberry yields. A single harvester is capable to replace nearly 30+ strawberry pickers, serving 8 acres of land per day.
Bosch: Deepfield Robotics, a product of Bosch, is a weed control robot that can be applicable at both organic farms & at conventional farms. This robot is efficient to dig out the weed even at 3cms into the ground and thus completely eliminates the application of herbicides.
There are multiple companies all over the world that are revolutionizing the agriculture practices and also the new entrants are witnessed in the market. With the increasing scope of robotics in agriculture, the companies are grabbing this opportunity to capture larger market share in the world.
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