User:WesleyDeeg/sandbox/Robotic advances in agriculture

Over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, the methods of agriculture in industrialized societies has changed immensely, largely shifting towards robotic influences in the agricultural sphere. Due to the industrial ideals of efficiency, robotic technology has grown to accommodate for previous labor costs or time costs involved in some human processes. These innovations have seen criticism and welcome from different audiences, and their widespread use has undoubtedly affected society. Technological development in the field of agricultural robots had been centered around the elimination of labor time and cost, and as such has been focused heavily on supplanting factory like processes during farming with machines instead of workers. Accordingly, technologies involving increased efficiency and productivity of sensory capabilities, mobility, and delicacy have been the largest products to come out of this research and development. The rise of machinery in the context of agricultural work has brought up many questions, as it has in other fields, about the effects of such a massive change from previous generations of living without the influences of technology.

Technological Changes
A number of technological inventions and innovations have been created for the sole purpose of streamlining agricultural processes, and research and development of these technologies continues to this day. Specifically, the development of robotic technology has been more focused on the improvement of sensory technology, controlling technology, and mechatronics devices. The purpose of these advancements is working towards the end goal of a mobile, autonomous robot, that could handle tasks such as spraying and pest inspection.

Sensors
Because of the elements of delicacy that are required for some tasks in the food production industry, robotic technology has not always been able to compete with human laborers in certain areas. This is why much of the research and development of this technology has gone into some tasks such as handling and cutting vegetables, previously unattainable fields for robots with insufficient sensors. Some developers have managed to break through that barrier with highly delicate sensory technology, advanced innovations that allow machines to detect the proper amount of force to utilize in their programmed task, such as cutting a cucumber, and thus adjust their usage accordingly. These developments see particular use in the fast food industry, which has gone to great lengths to mechanise its production line so that they can reduce time and labor costs. With these advancements, even more time can be cut out to improve efficiency in the industrial process.

Mobile Robots
As mentioned previously, the end goal of robotic agriculture is fully autonomous solutions for tasks such as spraying, pest inspection, difficult harvests (i.e. harvesting crops on steep inclines). For the purpose of achieving this end goal, many new prototypes and fully fledged inventions has arisen to accomplish these tasks. Inventions such as the Merlin Robot Milker, used for industrial milking, or the RV 100, used to transport potted plants through a greenhouse or other controlled environment, have already increased production times and efficiency in some industrial farms. However, in order to make robotic agriculture a widespread phenomenon not just in industrial farming, improvements must still arise in the areas of self-localization, route optimization, force sensing, recognition technology, and many more fields. Nevertheless, teams from countless universities and research centers are constantly working to develop new methods of robotizing the agricultural industry, for the end goal of an efficient industrial complex.

Prominence in Society
Much of the propensity towards robotic agriculture comes from the need to efficiency in our food production system. With the current world population at a little under 7.5 billion according to the Worldometers population clock, humanity's need for food steadily increases while the size of the land that is available to use remains the same. Studies have suggested that in countries such as Pakistan, who can expect a population increase of at least 30% in the next several decades have to improve their agricultural output by 25% in order to compensate for the increased demands for food and bio energy.

Beyond pure numbers of food output with the aid of agricultural robots, there have also been signs of increase in the prominence of robotics outside of farming applications. Humanoid robots are being utilized in kitchen preparation as well, with greatly increased capabilities of mobility and sensory technology aiding autonomous work to be done. Many international research and development challenges, such as the HUMABOT challenge in 2014, are encouraging innovators to strive for increases in technology capacity inside the kitchen, allowing for complete autonomous preparation of food. The demand for robots of this likeness, personal aid around household chores, is well documented through retail sales of multiple companies. The French-based SoftBank Robotics, or Aldebaran Robotics, distributes their robotic advancements across the world, and to date has sold over 9,000 models of the NAO personal robot, developed in 2006, and over 140 models of their newer retail assistant Pepper.

Economic Gains
Much of the arguments surrounding the increased mechanization of the workforce have been centered around job security and unemployment. As such, there have been many scientific studies into the effect of mechanization on wages and standards of living, specifically during the Industrial Revolution, when this event was highly visible. During this time period, many countries across the globe were delving into the idea of replacing jobs and workers with machines to greatly improve productivity. Because most of the output of the Industrial Revolution was recorded explicitly, studies in recent decades have been able to estimate increases in standards of living and real wages. These estimates differ greatly, but many of them believe that an increase in the standard of living and real wages occurred in line with the Industrial Revolution. Numbers for the estimates range from a mild increase in real wages in line with productivity to a doubling of wages in a 30 year time span. Regardless, most of this evidence suggests that gains from these technological changes gradually began to benefit a larger share of the labor force.

Replacement of Skilled Workers
Consistent with the rise of robotic technology has been the moral concern about displacing human jobs and livelihoods for the purpose of efficiency and cost effectiveness. As can be seen in many forms of media and articles throughout the years, this concern about robots replacing human jobs has become especially prominent with the introduction of robotic technology designed to replace skilled human workers. Before the 21st century, although autonomous technology existed, nothing developed at the time could do the job of a skilled human worker. Today, as proven with inventions such as NAO, a personal aid humanoid robot able to handle some cooking preparation work, the gap between robotic technology used to accomplish specific skilled tasks and human workers is decreasing.

This change has been covered by many scholars, dating back many years. John Maynard Keynes was one notable figure to predict the spreading of unemployment due to technological advances. In 2013, a study conducted by researchers at Oxford University sought to establish a methodology in predicting the probability of jobs being "computerized" in future years, the term meaning that a worker is replaced by a computer to accomplish the same task.. This model was based on a Gaussian process classifier, and utilizing this prediction model, the team identified 702 occupations that could potentially be susceptible to technological overtake and investigated their probability of computerization. As their data was based on United States employment and job distribution, their data cannot be assumed for the world as a whole. Nonetheless, their estimates predict a risk of 47% of US employment being computerized at some point in the future.

Among the 702 occupations are multiple jobs within the category of agriculture, including jobs such as pesticide handlers, fast food workers, and farmers. For each of those occupations, the study conducted by the Oxford team predicts a 97, 92, and 4.7% probability of computerization, respectively. This reflects the facts inherent in the development of the technology, as much of the focus in R&D in agriculture robots is on developing robots that are highly efficient at simple tasks that are accomplished by the first 2 jobs, whereas more complex management, such as that conducted by farm owners and ranchers, cannot be accomplished by robotics yet.