Software Architecture for Agricultural Robots: Systems, Requirements, Challenges, Case Studies, and Future Perspectives

Designing software architectures for autonomous robots for agricultural contexts is a demanding and difficult job due to the requirement to monitor numerous sensors and actuators, as well as autonomous decision-making in unpredictable, unexpected scenarios. Depending on the essential requirements of a robotic device for agricultural usage, robot software architecture is created differently. Since no single software architecture exists for all applications, extensive knowledge of the various software architectures for robots is needed when creating your own robotic architecture or selecting one from a number of existing architectures. As a result, this article provides a comprehensive history of software architecture and its application in the agricultural domain along with a chronology of how software design has evolved over time. We provide several case studies to understand the importance of application of software architecture in agriculture and food industry and how to choose the best architecture for agricultural tasks. Finally, this article discusses the open obstacles and difficulties that must be addressed in order to ensure more advancements in the development of robot architecture for agricultural applications.