Robots and farm staff could work together more safely thanks to a navigation system designed to improve trust and communication between humans and machines.
Scientists at the UK’s University of Lincoln used sensors mounted on a commercially-available robot to help machines understand where farm staff were positioned as they harvested fruit on a commercial fruit farm.
The sensors registered information on worker posture, the direction they faced and motion detection; data the robot used to follow commands by recognising specific gestures.
The scientists said the technology could create efficient and safe ‘semi-automatic’ systems on farms where humans are still needed to carry out complex tasks like harvesting soft fruits.
Writing in the Journal of Field Robotics, the researchers said robots have improved efficiencies in farm tasks like spraying, ploughing and seeding, but human labour is still needed for picking tasks — at least in the short to medium term.
In these situations robots can still be used for tasks such as transporting full trays and delivering empty ones, but farm workers need to be comfortable sharing their workspace and not feel like the machines are invading their personal space, they said.
Increasing trust
To tackle the challenge, the team developed a “human aware navigation module” that they say can be built into to the navigation systems of commercially-available farm robots.
The module detects and monitors people working around the robot, sounding alarms if it thinks a human could be at risk, as well as responding to movements and gestures people make.
“Apart from ensuring a physically safe human-robot interaction, the proposed module deals with the comfort level and psychological safety of human coworkers,” the researchers added.
“The latter is possible by using an explicit human–robot communication strategy that lets both know of the other’s intentions, increasing the level of trust and reducing inefficient pauses triggered by unnecessary safety actions.”
After testing the system on a fruit farm using a Thorvald II robot – a modular platform used for crop monitoring and picking – the scientists said there was a “high level of acceptance” from both experienced and inexperienced pickers when it comes to working with robots.
“Having robots capable of safely interacting with human workers can accelerate the adoption of cooperative harvesting strategies as a short/medium‐term solution to overcome the increasing problems of growers in the United Kindom related to seasonal worker shortage,” said Leonardo Guevara, an assistant professor at the Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technology and one of the authors of the study.
Future research will investigate using fleets of robots safely to improve farm efficiencies, he added.
