Towards a swarm robotic system for autonomous cereal harvesting

Abstract

Swarm robotics is an emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionise precision agriculture by coordinating fleets of small autonomous vehicles to minimise soil damage, increase farming resolution, lower the cost of automation, and provide solutions that are intrinsically safer and more sustainable than large monolithic systems. Here, we propose a novel swarm robotic system for autonomous harvesting of cereal crops such as wheat and barley. In contrast to existing agricultural swarm robotic systems, we intend to use small autonomous versions of traditional agricultural vehicles, in an attempt to narrow the skills gap for future end-users.