Swarm Robotics in Agriculture: Collective Behaviour for Precision Farming

Abstract:

Swarm robotics, inspired by collective behaviour in nature, offers significant potential to transform precision farming by enhancing efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. This paper details the use of swarm robotics in the agrarian field, pointing to the capacity of the technology to automate the complicated aspects of agriculture, including crop tracking, precise farming, destruction of vermin and harvesting. Through decentralised control and local communication between robots, swarm systems can complete tasks in a cooperative manner, which increases yield, cuts labour costs and wastage of resources. Although it has its benefits, mass utilisation of swarm robotics in farming has its obstacles, such as technological shortcomings, high start-up costs, and interfacing with conventional farming, as well as social effects, namely possible employment reduction. This article is about these challenges and the potential of swarm robotics to solve some of the main challenges in agriculture, to give a way forward in terms of future research and development, so that the potential of this new kind of technology can be exploited to the full.