More and more technologies are focused on the use of UAVs to collect information about the state of soil or plants. The advantages of this type of technology include the speed of all operations and low fuel consumption (when compared with a conventional aircraft). But this advantages have another side of medal - small size means also the lowered load-carrying capacity. Therefore, the UAV is best suited for visual control of the territory or the introduction of plant protection products. If talking about fertilization or direct processing of plants will require ground technics.
Professor Ian Yule argues that in many cases ground-based type of technics may be cheaper even for monitoring. For example, to assess the quality of pasture, where the height of the grass is not very large. Due to the fact that ground technic does not waste energy during a stop, and stopping itself does not mean falling to the ground, this class of technic has certain advantages.
A ground robot can work something like a «mobile observation post». At the same time, it can stop and become a temporary webcam at the given location. If you need to regularly inspect several points, the best solution will be a ground modification of the robot, for which non-flying weather simply does not exist. Despite the precipitation, wind speed and other weather factors interfering with the use of aircraft, such an aggregate will continue moving and collecting information.
The company AgResearch has developed a robot, called Agri-Rover. Its main task is monitoring of the state of the farm. The set of sensors that are planned to be used for this robot farmer is still not fully defined. The company even offers farmers to submit ideas on what this mechanical assistant should do for them.
Today, the range of tasks that can be solved by ground robots is very large. Robotic tractors can perform all the basic operations of land treatment, fertilization and harvesting. There is a technique for visual monitoring of the state of grapes and even an automatic pruner for vines.
But with all this, there are no robots to replace the dog. The four-legged friend of man combines such qualities that no robots have - speed and accuracy of movement, ease of care and low energy consumption. In this article, about the robot shepherd has already been told. Although it is not very correct to compare the dog and the robot, it is clear, that robots are better in one thing - the ability to work with various peripheral devices. That is, the robot can be part of the system of precision farming.
Perhaps an extravagant way out of this situation can be the creation of a cyber-dog, by installing special equipment on it. The trained dog will be able to perform simple maneuvers, which will be received via headphones, and the camera fixed on it will perfectly cope with the function of survey of the territory.
