Tomato-harvesting-robot competition towards smart agriculture

Abstract

In agriculture, the aging and depopulation of farmers cause the shortages of farmers and manpower. Most of commercialized robots are industrial robots for factory automation, and most of robots for the first industry, agriculture, forestry and fisheries are still under developing. The reasons are cost-efficiency of the robotization, safety of the works using robots, difficulty of outdoor operations, and knowledge transfer problem from farmers to computer, etc. As one of solutions for the problems, robot technology into the agriculture is expected to contribute to the laborsaving, improvement of production, production line automation, and also the management toward smart-agriculture. We organize the Tomato-harvesting-robot competition to offer the research field and welcome researchers into agricultural robotics.