The supportive role of robotic technology for sustainable agricultural development

The project deals with the aspect of human-robot interaction (HRI) and how humans can interact efficiently and effectively with robots to carry out agricultural tasks. The supportive role that robots can play in the field, or inside a greenhouse, can help in the development of sustainable agriculture. This can be accomplished by the introduction of, already existing, robotic technology that can augment the farmer’s capabilities to carry out repetitive and tedious agricultural tasks. In addition the introduction of robots can help in the development of sustainable agriculture to tackle the high costs of production that derive from increased labour costs and the observed shortage of labourers.

We emphasize that this is not research on robotics in agriculture; rather we use existing robotic technology to conduct research on HRI. This research is important because even though agricultural tasks may be characterized as “simple” for humans, such as the picking of fruits from a tree branch, such a task is considered very complex for a robot, because it involves the aspects of identifying a ripe fruit through possibly overlapping tree branches, reaching to grasp the fruit, without damaging it and placing it in a container.

The research methodology focuses on the area of the user interface (UI) design, implementation and evaluation, specifically for a human-robot interaction system. It involves the study of the volatile literature in the areas of: human-computer interaction (HCI), human-robot interaction, and of agricultural robotics. We will design, implement and evaluate the human-robot interface. We will use state of the art but existing robotic technology to carry out the actual test of the interface between farmers and the robot(s), which will take place in an open field and in a greenhouse environment.