Robotics and automation for improving agriculture
About this ebook
Chapters summarise developments in location and guidance systems, GPS technologies, machine vision, navigation, actuation, communication and control technologies. The second part of the book discusses deploying these techniques to save labour, improve precision, speed and efficiency in agricultural operations.
Chapters review the state of the art on the use of agricultural robots in planting, crop monitoring, spraying, irrigation and weed management. There are also reviews of orchard management and harvesting, harvesting of soft fruit and in-field grading of harvested produce. Other chapters cover the application of robotics in the livestock sector.
About the author
Dr John Billingsley is Professor of Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. He is a Fellow of the IET (UK), past Fellow of Engineers Australia as well as a Senior Member of the IEEE (USA). Professor Billingsley was one of the founders of Australia’s National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA), recently renamed the Centre for Agricultural Engineering. He has published widely on control theory and robotics.
Dr Yael Edan is Professor in Industrial Engineering at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, where she is Head of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and Director of the Agricultural, Biological and Cognitive (ABC) Robotics Initiative. Professor Edan is a member of the IEEE-RAS Special Interest Group on Agricultural Robotics and Automation and was a member of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. She is involved in a number of EU research projects (including the Sweeper and CROPS Projects) and is internationally renowned for her research in such areas as human-robot collaboration.
Dr Marcia Endres is Professor of Dairy Cattle Production at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is past-President of the Dairy Cattle Welfare Council as well as Chair of the International Precision Dairy Farming Organisation. Professor Endres is internationally renowned for her research on dairy cattle welfare and the use of precision farming technology in the dairy sector.
