Introductory Chapter: Recent Development and Applications of Agricultural Robots

Abstract

The robotics industry was originally developed to supplement or replace humans by doing dull, repetitive, dirty, or dangerous work [1]. Robot systems have broad application prospects in industry, agriculture, defense, and other fields. In the past decades, extensive research has been conducted on the applications of agricultural robots and automation to a variety of field and greenhouse operations, and technical fundamentals and their feasibility have been also widely demonstrated. Due to the unstructured environment, adverse interferences, as well as the complicated and diversified operation process, are the key in blocking its commercialization in robotic agricultural operations.