@article{40c1d8543b9a428a820b694a9598a7d4,
title = "Soft Robotics as an Enabling Technology for Agroforestry Practice and Research",
abstract = "The shortage of qualified human labor is a key challenge facing farmers, limiting profit margins and preventing the adoption of sustainable and diversified agroecosystems, such as agroforestry. New technologies in robotics could offer a solution to such limitations. Advances in soft arms and manipulators can enable agricultural robots that can have better reach and dexterity around plants than traditional robots equipped with hard industrial robotic arms. Soft robotic arms and manipulators can be far less expensive to manufacture and significantly lighter than their hard counterparts. Furthermore, they can be simpler to design and manufacture since they rely on fluidic pressurization as the primary mechanisms of operation. However, current soft robotic arms are difficult to design and control, slow to actuate, and have limited payloads. In this paper, we discuss the benefits and challenges of soft robotics technology and what it could mean for sustainable agriculture and agroforestry.",
keywords = "Mechanical engineering, Multifunctional landscapes, Perennial polyculture, Robotics, Sustainable agriculture",
author = "Girish Chowdhary and Mattia Gazzola and Girish Krishnan and Chinmay Soman and Sarah Lovell",
note = "Funding Information: A research team at the University of Illinois is currently developing small, low-cost, and autonomous agricultural robots (agbots) with “soft” arms and manipulators (Figure 2) that could be the dexterous and multipurpose co-robotic tool to address the complex requirements of productive agroforestry systems. The project is jointly funded by NIFA through the NIFA-NSF National Robotics Initiative (USDA 2019-67021-28989) and supported by EarthSense Inc. The major challenge in realizing agbots for commodity as well as specialty crops is the diverse and dexterous nature of the tasks required to be performed. For example, in a berry/nut polyculture, such tasks could include scanning berries for optimal ripeness, harvesting, controlling weeds, detecting insects and diseases throughout the dense plant canopy, and pruning and thinning branches. The complex and dexterous nature of agricultural tasks is the primary reason why traditional industrial robots with arms and manipulators made of rigid and heavy materials actuated with expensive servo-motors have not been successfully used at scale in production agriculture. Indeed, manipulating squishy berries in difficult to reach places with “hard” arms is difficult at low-cost. Funding Information: Funding: This work was supported by the joint USDA and NSF (National Robotics Initiative Program) award USDA 2019-67021-28989. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 by the authors. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2019",
month = nov,
day = "28",
doi = "10.3390/su11236751",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "11",
journal = "Sustainability",
issn = "2071-1050",
publisher = "MDPI AG",
number = "23",
}