Crammed with cameras and sensors, the metal crab slowly works its way through the cornfield. By scanning its environment, the little electronic harvest helper cunningly avoids heaps of earth and plant stems. Sowing, fertilizing, planting, bringing out herbicides or picking fruits: Dozens of these intelligent harvesting machines could be capable of working a complete field independently one day. Only the hushed buzz of their servomotors would reveal their nearly silent work.
Ripe for Robots
“Agriculture still offers great potential for automation”, says Peter Dahmen, a member of Crop Science’s research department. And some inventors and engineers like David Dorhout from Des Moines, Iowa, are offering innovative and forward-looking solutions: “Why not take the large machines of today and break them into thousands of smaller machines.” So he invented the six-legged Agrirobot “Prospero”. The autonomous micro-planter is just slightly larger than a basketball and yet it performs wondrous things. Its little aluminum legs easily carry it over every plot surface. If it finds an empty space, it will drill a hole into the ground and place a seed. Next, Prospero marks the spot with a spray and rambles off again.
In Dorhout’s vision, a whole swarm of his little agricrabs tends the field and even communicates among each other. “Similar to ants”, he says. But instead of pheromones, Dorhout’s machines use infrared signals to conduct their colleagues to an unworked area of the field.
“This approach completely frees the farmer from the farm machine and gives him more time for the economic and scientific aspects of his agribusiness”, the inventor explains. The farmer gains more time for seed selection, soil analysis or financial planning. “I’m really interested to see what the farmers of tomorrow will come up with if they are given a tool that tends their fields inch by inch or plant by plant”, Dorhout says.
Professor Simon Blackmore agrees: “Precision is the key to efficient agriculture.” He is the director of the newly founded National Centre for Precision Farming (NCPF) in Great Britain. And raising efficiency has become exceedingly necessary: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) worldwide food production will have to increase by 70 percent until 2050 to accommodate the worldwide demand. To meet this, manufacturers have already begun working on a vast array of high-performance machines today.
Professor Heinz Ulbrich and his team at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the Technische Universität München (TUM) are also making an important contribution: Their machine could soon become the next standard in agricultural robotics. With funding from the European Commission, they are developing a modifiable robotic arm. Depending on the requirements, different modules such as sensors, spraying devices or manipulators can be easily swapped. Their partner institute in Wageningen is also working on a sophisticated sensor system: special cameras that generate a three dimensional picture of the robot’s surroundings, helping it to distinguish fruits from leaves. Besides the proofed and tested manipulator, some other special modules are also planned: a sensor for determining the ripeness of grapes with fluorescent light, for example. Then robots could even pluck and preen in vineyards and orchards.
New Technologies and Traditional Machinery
“Robots will have considerable effects on agriculture”, says David Dorhout. Basic concepts such as crop rows might become unnecessary and not a single square inch will remain unobserved. Blackmore dares a prognosis: “In 20 years robotics will have revolutionized agriculture.” He is also certain that new technologies will be employed alongside traditional machinery. “And later robot generations will be intelligent enough to adapt to nature, the weather and other environmental conditions”, Blackmore adds. Crop Science’s technology expert, Peter Dahmen agrees: “We don’t know what the future looks like. But it is quite conceivable that robots will help us to increase the productivity of farming in 