Mobile robots in bio-production systems
Robotic applications have outgrown the structured industrial environments and moved also to semi-structured environments, such as hospitals and storage facilities, urban transportation, and agricultural environments. These environments require robots with advanced capabilities for planning and executing the allocated missions. Especially agriculture, where biological entities are involved, provides a highly challenging operation environment for robotic applications that is non-static, non-certain, and not known in advance. In terms of the market perspective, the potential for the implementation of robotics as an evolving process seems also high. According to a VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association) agricultural machinery was valued at €96bn (2013) and considering the introduction of mobile agricultural robots an increasing share of €30bn is expected to be assigned to the robotic market.
This speech provides of overview of the current state of mobile robotics in bio-production systems, the available technical solutions – applicable both in pure robotic systems and in manned machinery with advanced automation capabilities, the recent advances on planning aspects, i.e. route planning, multiple-units coordination, task assignment, and mission planning, and on navigation and perception aspects. Finally, the envisioned short- and mid-term future of mobile robotics in bio-production are presented alongside with the missing links for a fully deployment of autonomous vehicles in arable and high value crops production.