Australian Researchers Develop Robots for the Farm



By Brett Davis

University of Sydney researchers are examining the use of robots to help Australia become the "food bowl" of Asia.

Salah Sukkarieh at the university's Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies is leading a team developing robots that can sense, analyze and respond to their surroundings. This could help offset labor costs and other restrictions that could hamper Australia's ability to grow enough food for the Asia-Pacific region.

"This is where automation can help," he says in a university press release. "We can use it to increase efficiency and yield, by having many of the manual tasks of farming performed by specially designed agricultural robotic devices."

The team's first stage of work was to develop systems to enable robots to understand their surroundings. The unmanned systems involved were tested at an almond farm in Mildura, where they were able to develop a model of the orchard.

"The devices we've developed can collect, analyze and present this information autonomously, so a major part of the farmer's job can be done automatically," he says.

The next stage of the work, to begin early in the new year, calls for fitting the technology to stander farm tractors. The third, and most ambitious, segment of the work will be to enable the devices to harvest crops.