Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
7.5 Autonomous Vehicle Guidance .................................................................... 192
7.6 Novel Technologies for Crop Status Monitoring .......................................... 194
7.6.1 Laser Used in Precision Sprayer ....................................................... 194
7.6.2 Laser Used in Yield Estimation ........................................................ 195
7.6.3 Laser/LIDAR Used in Tree Canopy Volume Estimation ................. 195
7.6.4 Machine Vision Used in Yield Estimation ....................................... 197
7.6.5 Machine Vision Used in Detecting Citrus Greening on Leaves ...... 198
7.7 Conclusions................................................................................................... 199
References .............................................................................................................. 199
7.1 INTRODUCTION
The motivation toward adoption of mechanization and automation technologies for
fruit and vineyard production has been associated primarily with labor productivity,
labor cost, and availability, as well as other factors such as cultivar/varietal improve-
ments, fruit quality and safety, disease and pest pressures, environmental concerns
and regulations, and global market pressures. Although the vast majority of progress
has been realized during the past 50 years, there seems to be an accelerated effort in
developed countries in the past decade as two major factors come to bear. The first
is rapidly escalating labor cost along with a shrinking labor force, and the second
is a significant acceleration in agricultural automation technological development
enabled by aerospace, defense, and industrial efforts. The concept of appropriate
automation becomes crucial, because global market pressures limit the cost of auto-
mation to competitive levels. Unlike the aerospace and defense industries, fruit and
vineyard producers must remain economically competitive with global suppliers.
Consequently, the selection of appropriate technology is probably the most impor-
tant aspect of automating any production practice. It is therefore necessary to con-
sider the full spectrum of solutions when addressing a production problem, which
include manual aides, traditional mechanization, mechatronically enhanced equip-
ment, semiautonomous robotics with human assistance and oversight, or ultimately
fully autonomous systems. In the past several decades, many of the tree fruit, veg-
etable, nut, and vineyard producers have promoted the development of mechanized/
automated solutions for various production tasks, including harvesting. However,
successful harvesting development has largely been limited to processed applica-
tions where fruit damage during harvesting is minimally problematic, since the fruit
will be typically processed within 24 h of harvest. Several fresh market horticultural
commodity groups around the United States are facing growing global market pres-
sures that threaten their long-term viability. For instance, Brazilian orange growers
can produce, process, and ship juice to Florida markets cheaper than can Florida
growers. In the event that tariffs are eliminated, numerous horticultural commodi-
ties across the nation will not be able to compete in either domestic or international
markets with their counterparts in Latin America and Asia. The combination of low
commodity prices both domestically and abroad, high labor prices, and low labor
productivity present significant challenges for U.S. agriculture.
