On the Current State of Agricultural Robotics In

SIMPOZIJ AKTUALNI Izvorni znanstveni rad

ZADACI Original scientific paper MEHANIZACIJE 47. POLJOPRIVREDE

ON THE CURRENT STATE OF AGRICULTURAL ROBOTICS IN CROP FARMING CHANCES AND RISKS Maximilian TREIBER1*, Franz HILLERBRAND2, Josef BAUERDICK1, Heinz BERNHARDT1 *E-mail of corresponding author: [email protected] 1 Lehrstuhl für Agrarsystemtechnik, Technische Universität München, Am Staudengarten 2, D-85354 Freising, GERMANY 2 Hofgut Schrittenlohe, Schrittenlohe 1, D-85283 Wolnzach, GERMANY

ABSTRACT For decades, labour shortage in agriculture has been met by clout increase through heavy machinery, creating environmental problems. Latest automation technology offers additional opportunities for a more sustainable land use. Therefore, new information and communication technology can be merged into Cyber Physical Systems providing the basis for agricultural robotics. A widely discussed concept is swarm farming, where many small robots work and organize autonomously. The human operator is left with planning, surveillance and emergency management chores. This work examines the current state of agricultural robotics in the market and identifies chances and threats the technology poses to the work environment of farmers. Robots can improve the efficiency of crop farming and help mitigate negative environmental impacts of heavier farm machinery. Low-input robots offer special potential, as they can perform tasks that originally required the precision of human body work. A combined approach of small robots and middle-sized tractors, working together in swarm configuration will foster the scalability of the resulting system, but also requires more complex surveillance- , management- and data infrastructure systems. Robots in agriculture can mitigate physical loads and stress of monotonous work, but the required level of skill, education and always-alert-times will rise. On the other hand, these changes in technology will create new, well paid jobs for educated experts in rural areas. Keywords: Digitization, Smart Farming, Swarm Robotics, Field Robots, Data Management

47th Symposium "Actual Tasks on Agricultural Engineering", Opatija, Croatia, 2019.

M. Treiber, F. Hillerbrand, J. Bauerdick, H. Bernhardt

INTRODUCTION Agriculture must produce food, feed and fibre for up to 10 billion people by 2025. Simultaneously agriculture faces severe and increasing labour shortage. Within the last decades, the agricultural technology path has therefore solely developed through clout increase and heavy power vehicles. Since the last disruptive innovation of the self-driving tractor and mobile combustion engine combines in the early twentieth century, farming operations stayed the same, reaching their maximum capacity. Further, labour shortage in the agricultural sector urges the need of additional automation in the field. New ideas of farm management need to be developed. Throughout this process, information and communication technology must be merged into new Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Such systems have been introduced by several institutions already (Herlitzius, 2017). As the adoption of these smart systems increases, the optimization, regulation and control of machines, logistics, quality control and traceability is made possible. That opens the fields for robots, that have been hindered so far by diverse environmental conditions in agricultural landscapes and production systems. Furthermore, Blockchain technology is on the rise to revolutionize information sharing in agricultural value chains. For a successful connection of information sharing systems to agricultural robotics, still, new communication networks must be established in rural areas (Fitzek, 2018). Pedersen et. al. (2008) already discussed the current state of Field- Robots, preparing the ground for a discussion on the potential of self-communicating machines. In the future, Robotics, will change agricultural practices on both small- and large- scale scenarios (Minßen et al., 2015), earthbound as well as airborne (Scherer et al., 2017). The potential of robotic farming can be put into practice by fully automating conventional heavy agricultural machinery and by arranging machine-to-machine communication of self- managed, autonomous small vehicles. A widely discussed idea is the concept of swarm farming with small vehicles working together in the field, organizing themselves, with the only remaining human task of surveillance and emergency management. Aim of this research, is to display the current state of agricultural robotics in crop farming, including innovations that are “in the pipeline” already. This work shall further identify chances and risks and help to predict future developments in the crop production value chain. Based on the technological possibilities at hand, changes in the work environment shall be analyzed from a farmer’s perspective.

MATERIALS AND METHODS Starting from an overview of businesses and use-cases of agricultural robotics available at present, a thorough literature review is carried out. Further use-cases and possible evolvements of agricultural robotics in the future (mid-term and long-term) are identified. Furthermore, an own classification system of agricultural robotics is applied (Figure 1). The robotic solutions are categorized into airborne and earthbound solutions. In the next step the interaction towards telemetry- and data-management Systems is discussed. Finally, the way robotics influence external stakeholders and the human decision-making unit (farmer) by interaction over these systems is evaluated. In the end, the findings are discussed regarding impacts the changes in technology will have on the farmers profession and what chances and opportunities may arise in the future.

On the current state of agricultural robotics in crop farming chances and risks

Figure 1 Categorization of Agricultural Robotics and the interaction of such categories towards external stakeholders

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Throughout the research, 228 companies and their robotic solutions regarding agriculture have been reviewed. Out of these, 49 companies do have robots that are in the market at present already. 137 Companies do have technology, that is very probably going to hit the market mid-term and 42 companies do have robotic solutions applicable for agriculture in the pipeline long-term. Figure 2 shows, that there is already a significant number of robotic solutions for agriculture on the market. In the mid-term, up to three times as many may follow. For the long term, there are some innovations in the pipeline already, that can make a big impact in the field of agricultural robotics, but of course the amount of solutions available in the long-term is impossible to entirely predict. The further categorization of the found solutions is shown in Figure 3. In absolute numbers, the earthbound robots play the most important role. Airborne robotic systems like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for mapping, surveillance or precision farming chores like spraying or fertilizing special cultures (e.g. vineyards) are available as well and expected to rise further in the midterm. The last two categories are the data-management and telemetry solutions. Interpretation of these numbers must be done cautiously, as the borders between these two categories can be blurry. As data-management solutions are on a strong rise at present and in the mid-term, their long-term developments are hard to predict. The same goes for telemetry solutions, that may have their strongest rise for agricultural robotics in the mid- term, judged by the number of companies having solutions in the pipeline already. However, after further review, the data-management and telemetry solutions should have been merged into one category, as they often form the joint basis for a robotic system being successful in the market. That’s why their importance should not be underestimated.

M. Treiber, F. Hillerbrand, J. Bauerdick, H. Bernhardt

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0 total present mid-term long-term availability of solutions for agricultural robotics

Figure 2 Availability of solutions for agricultural robotics on a timely horizon

From a more general point of view, Figure 3 shows, that the field of agricultural robotics is on the rise mid-term. Earthbound robots, the use of drones and the telemetry and data- management systems, going hand in hand with this hardware, will become more and more common in agricultural practice in the next few years. As a result, farmers must get used to the presence of this technology in their working lives. For the long-term, the development is hard to predict, but the fact, that there are thus many innovations in the pipeline already, that are supported by public relations and marketing measures, speaks for an ongoing trend.

20 No. of solutions

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availability on the market in categories

Figure 3 Availability of solutions for agricultural robotics in categories

On the current state of agricultural robotics in crop farming chances and risks

Regarding the standalone earthbound robots that are on the market already, there are eight major approaches that can be identified. They are shown in Figure 4 in conjunction with their relative frequencies in the dataset of earthbound robots, that are already available today (at least as prototypes for proof of concepts). The most common application for robots in the dataset is a weeding robot, followed by implement carriers, that are versatile platforms for multiple tasks in crop farming. Next in frequency are sensing platforms and pickers, that rely heavily on sensor technology and image evaluation processes. Finally, Sprayers and combinations from sprayers and weeders are of importance, as well as platforms for special crops like for example asparagus or hop, that differ massively in construction from the other categories and each other. An important observation regarding this dataset is, that most of the earthbound robots are small and light, matching the expectations of agricultural robotics in public perception. Others, like some sprayers and especially the implement carriers are bigger in size and weight and can be compared to small or medium sized conventional tractors in size and weight. Concerning that a cropping system consists of many different machines and different tasks, a single agricultural robot can only partly automate the system. Therefore, it is very likely, that on future robot farms, different robots will perform different tasks in a cropping system and must communicate and work together with the help of telemetry data exchange and smart data-management and decision-support systems.

weeder&sprayer

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Figure 4 Earthbound robots for agriculture, available at present (at least as POC prototype), with relative frequencies in the dataset

The smaller robots, in general, are more suitable for tasks like weeding, seeding, sensing or spraying. Some of them will have significant impacts on the work environment of farmers, as they can, to a certain degree, substitute human labour in tasks like picking fruits or harvesting special crops, that required many human workers in the past (Calderone, 2014). There are tasks like tillage however, that require the bigger implement carriers. It is likely,

M. Treiber, F. Hillerbrand, J. Bauerdick, H. Bernhardt

that in robot farming systems of the future, small and medium sized machines will work cooperatively. From a farmer’s perspective, not only is there a need for self-organizing robot swarms of small machines that handle one single task, but more diverse systems, with many different agricultural robots, working on different tasks, are needed. That requires single robots of different kinds to communicate with each other and the farmer. Therefore, the importance of farm management information systems and new approaches for machine-to- machine (M2M) and human-to-machine (H2M) communication will keep on rising. Nonetheless, the farmer must always have the possibility to gain direct control over any machine as a last-resort fall back solution (Griepentrog, 2017). The combined approach of small and big autonomous machines can help to maximize the benefits, the use of robots in agricultural systems offers. Achievable benefits are for example a higher precision of work, the mitigation of soil compaction, driver relief, avoidance of accidents and optimal usage of machine capacities (Eder, 2016). They stand against the risks of the technology, like for example loss of autonomy in decision making, polarization of work, higher complexity of work or the increase of stress due to permanent availability of the farmer (Zecha, 2018). But the transfer of technology, originally developed for other applications than agriculture, brings great opportunities as well. The attraction of skilled workers and young graduates to the agricultural sector is of utmost importance. Also new jobs can be created in rural areas, offering these professionals work and mitigating the adverse effects of urbanization (Duckett et al., 2018)

CONCLUSIONS Agricultural robots improve the efficiency of crop farming and help mitigate negative environmental impacts of bigger farm machinery. Low-input robots offer special potential, as they can perform tasks in the field that originally required the precision of human body work. There are several concepts for agricultural robots in the market already. The most common of which are weeding machines or concepts for multi-use implement carriers. A big increase in offerings and adoption is to be expected for the near future. A combination of two approaches, conventional automation of heavy farming machinery and swarm robotics, or an integration of both into one system of middle-sized tractors that are part of swarm farming will foster scalability of the agricultural robot systems. Therefore, the development of telemetry-solutions, data-infrastructure, management- and decision-support systems must go hand in hand with hardware development for successful adoption in agriculture. Regarding the impact on the work environments of farmers, the socio-economic risks of robotic farming remain uncertain and even rise the question of redundancy of the human farmer as such. With his experience and expertise being outcompeted by smart systems, artificial intelligence and rapidly extending knowledge backed by Big Agricultural Data, the required level of skill, education and always-alert-times will rise. On the other hand, robots in agriculture can improve the quality of work, or mitigate physical strains, exposure to dangerous work environments and stress of monotonous work. Further, they offer the big opportunity to create new, well paid jobs for educated experts in rural areas.

On the current state of agricultural robotics in crop farming chances and risks

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Calderone, L. (2014). Robotic Farming for The Future. Industrial Robotics. Retrieved 15.10.2018, from https://www.roboticstomorrow.com/article/2014/12/robotic-farming-for-the-future/5238 Duckett, T., Pearson, S., Blackmore, S., Grieve, B. (2018). Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture. UK-RAS Network, London. Eder, J. (2016). Autonomie: Die Traktroboter kommen. Traction 3. Retrieved from https://www.agrarheute.com/traction/tests-technik/autonomie-traktroboter-kommen-522818 Fitzek, F. (2018). Echtzeitfähige Funkvernetzung für hochautomatisierte Arbeitsmaschinen und - prozesse in der Landwirtschaft. Landtechnik der Zukunft - Großtraktoren + Giganten oder Feldschwärme. TU Dresden, Dresden. Griepentrog, H. (2017). Der Landwirt bleibt unverzichtbar. Agrarzeitung 45, 13. Herlitzius, T. (2017). Automation and Robotics - The Trend Towards Cyber Physical Systems in Agriculture Business. AVL List GmbH, TU Dresden and SAE International, Dresden. Minßen, T.-F., Urso, L-M., Gaus, C-C., Frerichs, L. (2015). Mit autonomen Landmaschinen zu neuen Pflanzenbausystemen. ATZoffhighway 8/3, 6-11. Pedersen, S., Blackmore, B. S., Fountas, S. (2008). Agricultural Robots - Applications and Economic Perspectives. Service Robot Applications, Yoshihiko Takahashi, IntechOpen, DOI: 10.5772/6048. Available at: https://www.intechopen.com/books/service_robot_applications/agricultural_robots_- _applications_and_economic_perspectives Scherer, M., Chung, J., Lo, J. (2017). Commercial Drone Adoption in Agribusiness - Disruption and Opportunity. Ipsos Business Consulting, Beijing. Zecha, C. (2018). XAVER - Roboterschwarm für das Feld. Landtechnik der Zukunft - Großtraktoren + Giganten oder Feldschwärme. TU Dresden, Dresden. Retrieved 14.10.2018, from http://nbn- resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-234755