Future Agriculture: Robots that can pull weeds, remove insects, and pick vegetables are coming

　　Agriculture is an industry that is vital to mankind and extremely challenging. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that by 2050, the output of agricultural products must increase by more than 70% over 2007. This is because of the rapidly increasing population, climate change and more diverse consumer demands on the planet. At the same time, traditional agricultural production is one of the most demanding jobs that require extremely high physical strength.

　　Automation may be the answer to dealing with extreme weather, increasing food demand and liberating labor. In fact, robots have made a huge contribution to the modernization of the industry.

　　In Tuscany, Italy, a group of young scientists and engineers drew a blueprint for the future of agriculture. Their agricultural project "High-tech Intelligent Robots for Agricultural Solutions" (SMASH) consists of a modular platform with the latest robotics technology.

　　"This robot is still a prototype. But we want to show everyone that we can break through technical difficulties and complete agricultural work with the help of robots." SMASH project manager Nicolini explained.

　　SMASH is not a single machine, but is composed of a series of devices. This includes a robot, a base station, drones and field sensors. They can send important information to farmers.

　　Agrobot is an intelligent mobile robot that can be programmed and remotely controlled. It can work autonomously in farmland, perform a series of tasks such as grape planting and gardening operations. Agricultural robots can autonomously monitor the condition of crops, detect potential diseases, remove weeds and collect plant samples. In the event of disease or insect damage, it even chooses environmentally friendly products to treat plants.

　　Nicolini said: "This technology is attributed to the UR10 collaborative robot arm we used in the project. Its performance is impressive. The robot can also be controlled in real time by an external computer and realized advanced motion control with the help of visual sensors. "

　　Will we see more such robots in farmland in the future?

　　"I firmly believe that the next generation of farmers will use robots and new technologies in their farmland. There are many factors that will promote the development of farmland robots, such as new regulations on the use of pesticides and skills shortages. Many companies are already working on developing new designed, rugged, user-friendly, effective, and inexpensive agricultural robots."

　　Nicolini's ideas seem to be confirmed by what happened in the UK. The "vegetable picking robot" developed by a team at the University of Cambridge was first trained in the laboratory to recognize and harvest lettuce balls. In cooperation with local fruit and vegetable cooperatives, and in actual tests on various other fields, the function of the robot has also been confirmed.

　　For decades, potatoes and wheat have been harvested on a large scale by large agricultural machinery, but many other crops have not been automated until now. Although the University of Cambridge’s prototype machine is not as skilled as farmers, the project shows that the use of robots in agriculture can be expanded. Therefore, even in areas that have been unimaginable for a long time, the automation of agricultural machinery will soon become possible: even for fragile crops such as ball lettuce that are particularly difficult to harvest by machinery, the use of robotic arms may become a reality.

　　Through the above case, we can see that robots have great potential in agriculture, but the complete automation of agriculture will not be realized immediately. Especially for the energy of outdoor agricultural robots, everyone has a consensus that chemical fuels that increase carbon emissions cannot be used. At this stage, only lithium iron phosphate batteries with high safety and cycle life of up to 4000 times can be used, especially those that can 1:1 replacement of lead-acid lithium iron phosphate battery pack, it provides a variety of options.