AI, IoT and Robotics in Smart Farming: Current Applications and Future Potentials

Farming is the backbone of the Indian economy, with a critical role in its GDP growth. By 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion, requiring a 70 percent increase in global food production. Traditional agricultural practices are becoming increasingly inefficient and unreliable because of several issues, including soil degradation, water stress, nutrition shortage, insufficient infrastructure linkages, post-harvest loss, and information asymmetry. However, detrimental climate change is one of the most severe concerns confronting this industry. Thus, smart farming or digital agriculture is now regarded as a far more sustainable practice as it includes the management of farms via edge cutting technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), drones, big data etc. to maximize the quantity and quality of crops while minimizing the abundance of human work needed. It entails using sensors and automated irrigation procedures to monitor agricultural land, temperature, soil moisture, pH level, etc. Employing these technologies increases profitability, decreases waste, and preserves environmental quality. Although the smart agriculture business is expanding rapidly due to the world’s growing population and rising food consumption, this field still has a scope of academic literature. This paper aims to describe the different cutting-edge technologies currently being used in smart farming, their use cases, and their future directions. For this paper, a case study technique has been employed to study several technologies and their prospects in this endeavor. This study will be helpful to academicians and Government officials that can further help farmers to create a smart and more sustainable agriculture industry.