Recently, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the CPC Central Committee, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission made important instructions on the work of spring agricultural production across the country. Xi Jinping emphasized that it is necessary to strengthen the construction of modern agricultural infrastructure such as high-standard farmland, farmland water conservancy, and agricultural mechanization, improve the level of agricultural science and technology innovation, and accelerate the use of it, so as to enhance food production capacity and disaster prevention and mitigation capacity.

On February 25, a national video conference on agricultural production in spring was held in Beijing. The important instruction of Xi Jinping was conveyed and learned at the meeting. Hu Chunhua, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice premier of the State Council, attended the meeting and delivered a speech. He emphasized that it is necessary to implement the strategy of “storing grain on the ground and hiding grain on technology”, accelerate the modernization of production facilities, advance scientific and technological progress, and strengthen production support and protection.

In recent years, with the rapid development of agricultural agglomeration, various robots used in agricultural production have gradually become an important content of agricultural technology and equipment research and development. The emergence and application of agricultural robots not only alleviated the problems of rural labor shortage and irrational structure to a certain extent, but also changed the traditional agricultural labor methods and promoted the development of modern agriculture.

Among the companies counted by the Secretariat of the Organizing Committee of the World Robot Conference, nearly 10% of robot companies are engaged in the research and development of agricultural robot-related technologies and products, and some of the projects participating in the “Star of Investment” activities organized by the World Robot Conference also have Fewer items are related to agricultural robots.

There is no doubt that agriculture will become an important area for the future landing of the robot industry, and agricultural robots will also make outstanding contributions to efficient, safe and intelligent agricultural production and agricultural green development.

Agricultural robots are getting more and more attention

Agricultural robots can gradually replace manpower and continuously help agricultural production reduce labor intensity. At the same time, it can also improve labor efficiency and help solve the problem of labor scarcity in many countries. This makes agricultural robots more and more valued by countries around the world.

North America and Europe are leading the world in the use of precision agriculture and agricultural robots, but the Asia-Pacific region (mainly China and India) is also growing rapidly. According to a recent Tractica report, by the end of 2024, the annual shipment of agricultural robots is expected to reach 600,000 units (the annual shipment in 2016 was only 33,000 units).

Zhao Chunjiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that agricultural robots have now become a hot spot in the world. During 2017-2021, the compound annual growth rate of artificial intelligence applications in agriculture is 22.68%. It was USD 2.76 billion in 2016, USD 11.1 billion in 2020 and USD 30.8 billion in 2025. It mainly includes agricultural drones, unmanned tractors, intelligent harvesters, intelligent weeders, milking robots, agricultural automation and control systems. Wait. The widespread application of agricultural robots is an important factor for the rapid development of the artificial intelligence agricultural market.

Countries increase R & D of agricultural robots

The widespread application of agricultural robots is an important factor for the rapid development of artificial intelligence agricultural markets, so some countries have increased their research and development efforts on agricultural robots.

Although the research on robots in China started relatively late, many domestic research institutions and enterprises are also discussing unmanned farms, and demonstrations of unmanned farms have also been built, and the industry has developed rapidly.

In terms of job object recognition and positioning algorithm optimization, the main research in various countries is to identify tomatoes, sweet peppers, apples, citrus and litchi, vegetables and fruits, and weeds and crop diseases. China has relatively more research output in this direction. .

In terms of navigation and path planning algorithm optimization, related research in Japan and Spain is even more advanced. The United States has relatively more output in the research of sorting and monitoring of operating objects. The research focus includes fruit sorting, aquaculture monitoring, and milk production and risk monitoring.

In general, there are still significant gaps between China and developed countries in some places. For example, the integration of agricultural and animal husbandry technology and machinery is not close enough. The domestic stability, failure rate, and ease of use are not ideal. Low, intelligent level is not high, the gap between core algorithms is significant.

“Farms of the future will be unmanned farms and will require a large number of agricultural robots.” Said Zhao Chunjiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The intensive and large-scale process of global agricultural production is constantly accelerating, and the demand for agricultural robots in various countries will continue to increase.

 In terms of technology, with the deep integration of new generation information technology such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence with agricultural technology, agricultural robots, as a new generation of intelligent agricultural machinery, will break through the bottleneck and be widely used. At the same time, future research on new technologies for agricultural and pastoral robots includes deep learning, new materials, human-machine integration, and haptic feedback. Human-machine integration is an important part of future agricultural development, which can improve operating efficiency. Human-machine integration technology reduces research and development costs, and robots predict human intentions to complete the work