Agricultural robotics [TC Spotlight]

Agriculture is just one step in the supply chain that leads to the table of the consumer. Just as automation has brought down the price of electrical goods by reducing the manpower involved, so is the price of agricultural production being reduced. Although electronic games are a luxury, food is a necessity that must be produced at all costs. We therefore need either more farmers or more ways to produce food with limited manpower. The robots are coming to the rescue. The goal of agricultural robotics is not only to apply robotics technologies on the field of agriculture but also to use the agricultural challenges to develop new techniques and systems. The scope of agricultural robotics includes 1. most farming environments for produce, which presents large, semistructured open spaces 2. farm facilities for a variety of animals, which could also present large semistructure open spaces (for example, cattle-grazing areas) or environments that are more built up, such as caged chicken farms 3. forestry 4. aquaculture.