| The aim of robots in agriculture is to increase crop
yield and improve the quality of production. Humans can only
work for so many hours a day, but autonomous robots never
stop running if given a never ending supply of energy.
Whereas more farmers are needed to tend a greater area of
cropland, only a few trained personnel are needed to
maintain a large group of robots. If workers are too tired
or simply find their tasks too difficult or tedious, they
might perform their jobs poorly. Robots on the other hand
perform the same task the same way over many repetitions. As
a result, the same quality of work is maintained. In
the future, rural robots will even vary how they perform a
certain task with correspondence to changing factors like
weather [14].
 But
then why is greater food production needed in the first
place? Today, many people across the globe are suffering
from hunger. According to the Harvard School of Public
Health, “over 30 million people are going hungry on a
regular basis” and “the explosion of hunger has outstripped
the ability of existing hunger relief programs, both
governmental and private, to satisfy this crucial need” [9].
By merely increasing crop yield, however, there will be a
higher food surplus that can be delivered to areas that need
it. Evidently, robots which achieve this goal will benefit
the entire world in the years to come.
 Additionally,
when manned long term space flights are possible, food will
need to be grown in space when deliveries from Earth are not
feasible. Robots seem the best solution to grow and tend key
crops, so that astronomers, already busy with mission
objectives, do not have to take on an additional complex
task. Already, NASA has funded an Ohio State University
research team to develop a tomato harvesting robot [Current
Technology].
[15] |
