Over the centuries, as farmers have adopted more technology in their pursuit of greater yields, the belief that bigger is better has come to dominate farming, rendering small-scale operations impractical. But advances in robotics and sensing technologies are threatening to disrupt today’s agribusiness model. There is the potential for intelligent robots to change the economic model of farming so that it becomes feasible to be a small producer again, says a robotics engineer.
Ripe for the picking
The Netherlands is famed for the efficiency of its fruit- and vegetable-growing greenhouses, but these operations rely on people to pick the produce. Humans are still better than robots, but there is a lot of effort going into automatic harvesting, says an agricultural engineer, who is working on a sweet-pepper harvester. The challenge is to quickly and precisely identify the pepper and avoid cutting the main stem of the plant. The key lies in fast, precise software.
