ROBOTICS FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES

Abstract

Robotics has emerged as a transformative force in modern agriculture, addressing key challenges such as labor shortages, environmental sustainability, and resource optimization. This review presents an overview of current advancements in agricultural robotics, encompassing ground-based robots, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and autonomous tractors. Empirical evidence highlights significant gains, including herbicide reduction of up to 85%, weeding efficiencies exceeding 90%, and harvesting success rates of 75-90% for various crops. UAVs have improved early disease detection by 40%, while artificial intelligence (AI)-based weed identification achieved an F-score of 0.9843. Despite these promising results, most systems remain in prototype or field-testing stages, constrained by high costs ranging from US$50,000-US$120,000 and technical limitations in perception, navigation, and integration. This review systematically synthesizes existing literature to assess applications, technological capabilities, performance outcomes, and barriers to adoption, providing key insights into the future of robotics in agriculture.