From Smart Farming towards Unmanned Farms: A New Mode of Agricultural Production

Abstract

Agriculture is the most important industry for human survival and solving the hunger problem worldwide. With the growth of the global population, the demand for food is increasing, which needs more agriculture labor. However, the number of people willing to engage in agricultural work is decreasing, causing a severe shortage of agricultural labor. Therefore, it is necessary to study the mode of agricultural production without labor force participation. With the rapid development of the Internet of Things, Big Data, artificial intelligence, robotics and fifth-generation (5G) communication technology, robots can replace humans in agricultural operations, thus enabling the establishment of unmanned farms in the near future. In this review, we have defined unmanned farms, introduced the framework of unmanned farms, analyzed the current state of the technology and how these technologies can be used in unmanned farms, and finally discuss all the technical challenges. We believe that this review will provide guidance for the development of unmanned farms and provide ideas for further investigation of these farms.

The social and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence in agriculture: mapping the agricultural AI literature

“…There is a concern about what types of data are retrieved by AI and how these data will be disseminated and used (Ryan 2019). The data retrieved, generated, and stored, from agricultural AI, raise concerns around data ownership and privacy (Wang et al 2021). Often, farmers must trade-off their privacy for the benefits and promises of AI on their farm; with 78% of farmers agreeing that they are concerned about their data being shared and sold on by corporations (Stock and Gardezi 2021).…”

Bio-Inspired Robots and Structures toward Fostering the Modernization of Agriculture

“…Soft robotics is an emerging class of robots that easily adapt their form and shape to external obstacles and constraints and can easily deform (see Figure 4 ) [ 8 ]. In contrast to traditional rigid machines, soft robots have unique soft-touch capabilities, which are desirable for weeding, irrigation, fruit picking, and seeding [ 34 , 80 , 82 ]. The soft gripper robotic arm designed for a robotic agricultural harvester by researchers in Spain was comparable to a soft robotic arm developed by Chinese researchers.…”

“…Fruit and vegetable picking grippers are an important technology to achieve rapid and labor-saving harvest. However, most of the existing fruit and vegetable picking grippers still use traditional rigid or underactuated grippers, which often cause fruit and vegetable damage by the heavy mass and lack of high-precision control, and have poor compliance in the operation process [ 55 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 ]. In recent years, inspired by soft creatures’ tentacles, soft robotic grippers have appeared and been used in robotics due to the emergence of soft robots.…”

Intelligent fish farm—the future of aquaculture

“…The management system directly controls the fan and feeder, and adjusts the feeding in real time. At the same time, the online monitoring system can monitor several of parameters of aquaculture water such as the pH, DO and temperature in real time, and transmit the feedback data to the management system, so as to realize the automatic feeding of bait (Wang et al 2021 ). The robot feeding control system developed by Finland’s Arvo-Tec company can realize remote control of feeding, water quality improvement, and precise feeding using the web interface (Arvotec 2021 ).…”