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Concept
Agricultural robot
Summary
An agricultural robot is a robot deployed for agricultural purposes. The main area of application of robots in agriculture today is at the harvesting stage. Emerging applications of robots or drones in agriculture include weed control, cloud seeding, planting seeds, harvesting, environmental monitoring and soil analysis. According to Verified Market Research, the agricultural robots market is expected to reach $11.58 billion by 2025.
Fruit picking robots, driverless tractor / sprayers, and sheep shearing robots are designed to replace human labor.
In most cases, a lot of factors have to be considered (e.g., the size and color of the fruit to be picked) before the commencement of a task.
Robots can be used for other horticultural tasks such as pruning, weeding, spraying and monitoring.
Robots can also be used in livestock applications (livestock robotics) such as automatic milking, washing and castrating. Robots like these have many benefits for the agricultural industry, including a higher quality of fresh produce, lower production costs, and a decreased need for manual labor. They can also be used to automate manual tasks, such as weed or bracken spraying, where the use of tractors and other human-operated vehicles is too dangerous for the operators.
The mechanical design consists of an end effector, manipulator, and gripper. Several factors must be considered in the design of the manipulator, including the task, economic efficiency, and required motions. The end effector influences the market value of the fruit and the gripper's design is based on the crop that is being harvested.
An end effector in an agricultural robot is the device found at the end of the robotic arm, used for various agricultural operations. Several different kinds of end effectors have been developed. In an agricultural operation involving grapes in Japan, end effectors are used for harvesting, berry-thinning, spraying, and bagging. Each was designed according to the nature of the task and the shape and size of the target fruit.
Official source
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