IDTechEx Research - Agricultural Robots and AI

A Question of When and Not If

BOSTON, May 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will drive a deep and transformative change in the agricultural world during the coming decades. Seeing, localising, and taking plant-specific intelligent action are no longer the exclusive realm of humans. Machines have demonstrated the technical viability and the emphasis has long shifted to the finer details of ROI, reliability, business model, etc. As such, a new class of activities in agriculture are prone to automation, just as advances in power and motion technologies mechanized many agricultural tasks, or just as advances in seed and agrochemical technology removed the human from many activities.

The IDTechEx assessment is that the upcoming changes are already a question of when and not if. The transformation will not be overnight, but nonetheless, robotics and AI are inevitability in the evolution of agricultural tools and practises. The scale of the potential is demonstrated in the chart below, which shows the forecasted long-term growth in annual unit sales (vs accumulated fleet size) of various autonomous and/or robotic solutions.

In this article, IDTechEx Research provides an overview of the key product categories and discusses underlying technologies which are driving this change. For each, we offer our insights about the current and future technical and adoption status. IDTechEx Research has been examining the technologies, applications, products, and players active in agricultural robotics and AI for the past five years. The article is based on the IDTechEx report "Agricultural Robots, Drones, and AI: 2020-2040: Technologies, Markets, and Players", which covers the latest developments and reflects our latest insights, analysis, and market projections.

Indeed, this report analyses all the emerging product types, including autonomous robots taking plant-specific precision action, intelligent vision-enabled robotic implements, diverse robotic fresh fruit harvesters, highly automated and autonomous tractors and high-power farm vehicles, drones, automatic milking, and so on. It provides interview-based company profiles and analysis of all of the key companies and innovators. Finally, the report offers short- and long-term market forecasts, considering the addressable market size in area or tons and value, penetration rates, annual robot sales, accumulated fleet size, total RaaS (robot as a service) revenue projections and so on. The forecasts cover 15 robot types and farming sectors.