Towards a robotic farming vision: advances in sensors and controllers for agricultural system applications

Real-time control is becoming an integral part of modern machine systems for high quality agricultural production. Maintaining consistently high quality agricultural production while keeping up with growing labor shortages is a challenge. Providing a work place for laborers which meets increasingly rigorous safety requirements and environmental constraints is likewise a challenge, more appropriate energy management and soil management have also motivated real-time control applications. Appropriate sensing and control systems can reduce labor requirements, function in difficult environments and allow vehicles to adapt to varying soil chemical and physical states. Labor shortages and environmental constraints coupled with the reality of spatial variability of chemical and physical properties among and within agricultural production areas readily explain the migration toward real-time control of agricultural equipment. This paper presents a review of the most recent advances in the development of sensors and controllers for agricultural applications.