Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 7.15
Unmanned tractor
(Courtesy John Deere Co.)
driver. And as soon as no permanent driver or operator is needed on the machine any
more, the incentive for using large and heavy equipment is gone. Having several
small machines instead of a large one then does not imply higher labour costs any
more. Robotic implements can operate around the clock. They can be used in a
more fl exible way with small and irregularly shaped fi elds. Because of the higher
number of implements, the default risk is smaller than that of large conventional
machines. But above all, the smaller robots might reduce soil compaction and there-
fore also help to introduce no-till practices.
However, presently robots are available only for rather simple operations such as
mowing or rice transplanting. Small robots, which move up and down in fi elds for
scouting purposes
such as detecting of weeds, of diseases, of insects or for sam-
pling soil are in the focus of research (Blackmore
2007
). A medium sized prototype
farm robot has been presented by the farm machinery industry (Fig.
7.15
).
Yet there still remain many farming operations, for which until now robotic solu-
tions do not exist. There is still much to do before soil compaction by giant machines
is eliminated by swarms of small robots that move through fi elds and make it pos-
sible to farm generally without any tilling of the soil.
References
Adamchuk VI, Ingram TJ, Sudduth KA, Chung SO (2008) On-the-go mapping of soil mechanical
resistance using a linear depth effect model. T ASABE 51:1885-1894
Bertuzzi P, Stengel P (1988) Measuring effects of tillage implements on soil surface geometry with
a laser relief meter. In: Proceedings of the 11th international conference of the International
Soil Tillage Research Organization (ISTRO), Edinburgh, 1988
Blackmore BS (2007) A systems view of agricultural robots. In: Stafford V (ed) Precision agricul-
ture '07. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, pp 23-31
Bogrekci I, Godwin RJ (2007a) Development of an image-processing technique for soil tilth
sensing. Biosyst Eng 97:323-331
Bogrekci I, Godwin RJ (2007b) Development of a mechanical transducer for real-time soil tilth
sensing. Biosyst Eng 98:127-137
