Human–robot collaboration systems in agricultural tasks: A review and roadmap

Abstract

Despite intensive R&D on agricultural robotics in the past decade, implementation of agricultural robotics remains limited due to the complex unstructured agricultural environment that confines performance. A possible way to increase performance is by human-robot collaboration (HRC) approaches for agricultural tasks and applications. The first contribution of this study comprises a quantitative review of the literature on HRC systems, detailing 27 distinct projects performed over the past 21 years. The review revealed that the important and innovative topics being investigated in HRC in agriculture focus on safety, ergonomics, awareness, and productivity and that most of the HRC work in agriculture has been devoted to harvesting and spraying tasks. The second contribution of this study constitutes a roadmap identifying specific R&D directions required to improve performance and implement HRC in agriculture in practice. Specifically, we define aspects of HRC systems for efficient collaboration and functionality, and we also delineate performance measures and experimentation procedures. The paper concludes with constraints, future challenges, and prospects for HRC in the context of smart agriculture.