Intelligent Autonomous Pollination for Future Farming - A Micro Air Vehicle Conceptual Framework With Artificial Intelligence and Human-in-the-Loop

Yi Chen,Yun Li

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2937171

Abstract

Food security is one of the societal challenge topics. As one-third of all food consumed by humans relies on animal pollination currently, this research provides an emerging solution to food supply reduction caused by population shrinking of natural pollinators, so as to reduce its impact on ecological relationships, ecosystem conservation and stability, genetic variation in the crop plant community, floral diversity, specialisation and evolution. This paper develops a conceptual technical roadmap of autonomous pollination for future farming using robotic micro air vehicle pollinators (MPrs). The research provides new insights into autonomous design and manufacture and into possible ways to increase the production efficiency which shortens the time from lab to market. The autonomous MPrs are realized using artificial intelligence and human expertise in the loop for smart agricultural industry. Further, this work identifies scientific and technological advances that are expected to translate, within proposed regulatory frameworks, into the pervasive use of MPrs for agricultural applications and beyond.

Highlights

In the era of Industry 4.0 (i4), many industry sectors have experienced a shift in the way that businesses are conducted, brought about by the proliferating use of combining artificial intelligence (AI) with human intelligence (HI)
AUTONOMOUS POLLINATION Associated with AI and Human, the robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) revolutionises the world’s economy and society over the twenty years, whose key application areas include: manufacturing, healthcare, offshore energy, environmental monitoring, search and rescue, defence, and precision farming, which have been highlighted by the a few economic unions, such as: the UK Government in 2013 as one of the eight Great Technologies that underpin the UK’s Industrial Strategy for jobs and growth; the Chinese government’s ‘ Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, which articulates an ambitious agenda for China to lead the world in AI
SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS Considering existing regulations, such as Ethical regulations on robotics in Europe [35], and allowing for analogical inferences, one could raise the objection that this micro air vehicle (MAV) pollinators (MPrs) might result in a fundamental change regarding our idea of MPrs for future farming and human society, and that existing regulations must be criticised for being too ‘human-centred’, that is able to cause a primary change in a distant future

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the era of Industry 4.0 (i4), many industry sectors have experienced a shift in the way that businesses are conducted, brought about by the proliferating use of combining artificial intelligence (AI) with human intelligence (HI). This paper aims to provide a conceptual technical roadmap of autonomous pollination system (APS) for future farming using robotic MPr with flapping wings. Most of the resesarch work has focused on robot structural design, circuits design or flight simulations, the fewer (FESTO) have addressed the ’intelligence‘ of the ’autonomous‘ robotic systems To fill this gap, this paper proposes an autonomous robotic pollinator using computational intelligence approaches. The contribution of this work can be outlined as a technical roadmap of autonomous pollination for future farming using a robotic MAV system with AI-in-the-loop (AIL) and Human-in-the-loop (HIL).

AUTONOMOUS POLLINATION

TERRAIN MODELLING OF THE POLLINATION WORKING AREA

INTELLIGENT POLLINATION MANAGEMENT

ETHICS AND REGULATORY ISSUES

Findings

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK