Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life
Vol. 6(2); September (2019), pp. 97–100
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/jrnal.k.190828.005; ISSN 2405-9021; eISSN 2352-6386
https://www.atlantis-press.com/journals/jrnal

Research Article

Field Robot and Sensing System
Eiji Hayashi*
Department of Mechanical Information Science and Technology, Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680-4, Kawazu, Iizuka, Fukuoka 820-8502, Japan

ARTICLE INFO
Article History
Received 17 November 2018
Accepted 20 December 2018
Keywords
Field sensing forestry
agricultureindustry

ABSTRACTLabors in which forestry and agriculture and factory, are working in severe circumstance. So, such workers are necessarily declinesand decreases. However, it is important for us to keep going in economy, life and nature. Therefore, to prevent a devastation of
the forest, the safety and the lack of food and work in harsh environments, we are thinking alternative technologies that a partof severe and dangerous works are taken robot instead of such workers. Some changes are needed that they are seen innovationsuch as the generation of a new industry by new technologies using AI and intelligent to improve how to recognize and express
more and more of the things that we have various desires.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

1. INTRODUCTION

2. AGRICULTURE

Japan’s population is decreasing after a peak in 2008 due to aging ofthe population and declining birthrates. Such shrinking population
will be having a major impact to build a sustainable economy andsociety over a long-term period, but almost all people feel that theeffects for a short term are small and negligible. Japan’s economy
and society will require more development in technologies such as
artificial intelligence and robots to make up for a decline in thelabor force. However, the decline of the labor force already invites
the labor shortages in the industries. Therefore, the Japanese government aims to introduce a new residence status that the foreign
workers are accepted in the 14 business sectors which are restaurants, hotels, nursing care, building cleaning, agriculture, fishery,
food and beverage, materials processing, industrial machinery,electronics and electric machinery, construction, shipbuilding,vehicle maintenance, and airport ground handling and aircraft
maintenance.

A decline of Japan’s agriculture has two big problems related towork in the severe environmental conditions such as hot summer
climate and labor shortage. Foreign agriculture uses a large-scale
management represented by United States, Australia and The
Netherlands using the agricultural machines or the environmental
control technology introduced the latest technologies.

The technology of robotics has provided efficient productivity,
quality and safety in factory as well as improved operability so far.
The developing robots in forestry, agriculture and food factory are
active nowadays since AI and robotics technologies has progressed
rapidly. Robot in the future has to have the work capacity or theco-operation cooperativeness equivalent to the skilled worker. It is
too difficult to make up for the labor shortages only in such robotics technologies at the present.
This paper reports on field robot and sensing system [1–4] as applications of the robotics and AI to the agriculture, the forestry, thefood factory and future industrial factory.
Email: haya@mse.kyutech.ac.jp*

2.1. Present State of Japan
About 4.42 million ha of the Japanese are of the cultivated land in
2018 is estimated to be 54.4% of paddy fields, 45.6% exclusive use
for meadows and 6.3% land under permanent crops of the total
amount of the fields.
Survey results are described in the meeting’s materials of Cabinet
Secretariat of Government of Japan as is shown in Figure 1.
The farmers who mainly engaged in farming is estimated to be
1.50 million persons, average age: 66.7 in 2017, compared with2.05 million persons, average age: 66.7 in 2010. Taking Japan’s rapidly
decreasing working population to consideration, it will be too severe
in reality for the future agriculture to substantially decrease the farmers. The age structure of farmer in each country shown in Figure 2
reveals that the Japanese farmers of this kind are more likely to be“mainly and significantly aged farmers” than other countries.

2.2. Agricultural Technology
Nowadays, it is important to improve the labor productivity and thelocal adaptability so that the agriculture product can be produced

E. Hayashi / Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life 6(2) 97–100

98

I already am engaged in Agriculture
4%2% No Comment
4%
I hope to be engaged
as a part-time farmer

This phenomenon has various influences on the recognition for
degree of mutilation of crop, controlling pests and inspect, crop
disease diagnosing, robot’s posture and travelling for the harvesting[10] as shown in Figure 3.

No
as a hobby

occurs due to regular reflection light bounces off from the smoothsurface. If the intensity of the regular reflection increases, a color ofobject is recognized as different color. Human usually sees a colorof the smooth surface from an angle occurring no regular reflection
to reduce and suppress.

58%

32%

2.4. Malaysia
Figure 1 | Question: Do you hope to be engaged in the agriculture?

70

61.1%

60
50
40
30
20

24.9%
22.0% 23.7%
16.6%
12.8%

100UK
英

26.6%
25.3%
27.2%
25.7 %
23.0% 24.8%
24.9%
20.1%
16.8%
19.2%
16.9% 14.8%
16.1%

10.4%

9.3%
4.1 %
2.9 %

8.0%

FR
仏独DE

22.6%

US米JP
日A 35-44歳UAN Age 65
Under age 35歳未満
35Age
35-44 Age
45-54 55-64歳
Age 55-64
Over
45-54歳
65歳以上

In mainly Malaysia and Indonesia, the palm oil industry has
developed more active with the palm plantation because oil palm
is a kind of tropical plants is grown on a large scale as the commercial crops.
The infield FFB in the plantation of Sime Darby in Figure 4
has 2724 ha in Sepang Estate. This area’s acclivity occupies
42.5% (1158 ha) of 0–6 degree from flat to undulating, 19.4%of 6–12 degree.
In case of SD2 (1699 ha) in Sepang Estate, the mature oil palm area
is broken into nine blocks to maintain the harvesting rounds withinapproximately 10 days.
The robot [11] has to be aimed autonomously 2–2.5 h/task (including traveling time), depending on a terrain and weather. If suchrobot can achieve, dozens of work rate and people would be
reduced and provided more efficient to the plantation.

Source : 3 rd. meeting's materials of Cabinet Secretariat of Governmentof Japan, No.4, 2015
https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/seisaku/kataro_miraiJPN/dai3/gijisidai.html

Figure 2 | The age structure of farmer in each country. The Japanese
farmers are more likely to be “mainly and significantly aged farmers”.

in quantity. The technology in the agriculture has promoted theintroductions of management and automation system [5,6], environmental control for the green house like a plant factory, especially in The Netherlands. The plant factory cultivates plant in thefacility utilizing artificial control of light, temperature, moisture,and carbon dioxide concentrations all year around. The producing
crops almost are vegetables which are divided into fruit vegetablesuch as tomato, strawberry, cucumber or eggplant, and green vegetable such as lettuce, spinach, green onion and herbs.
Such a plant factory has the issues as follows:

Figure 3 | The tomato harvesting robot picks a tomato. This robot canpick one of the tomatoes around 20 s.

•• Almost all work is done from raising seedling to harvesting byhand.
•• Initial cost and running cost.

2.3. Automation
All work from seedling to harvesting is difficult to automatically doby robotic technology because of the influence of light in the various situation [7–9]. It is important for robot to reduce and suppress
the influence of light including infrared. The influence of light

Figure 4 | The plantation and dropped fruit bunches in Sime Darby’splantation.

E. Hayashi / Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life 6(2) 97–100

99

Figure 5 | The cyclical use of the forests as circulative resources.

3. FORESTRY
Japan has one of the world’s largest forests, and the amount of
the forests area accounts approximately 25 million ha and 66% ofJapan’s land area of 37.8 million ha. However, the labor force population of Japan declines with the aging over the long term, and isabout 45,000 people in 2015.
The forests in Japan are almost the plantation forests made by planting the seedings which cover the area of 10 million ha of the forests in Japan, and are consisted of Japanese cedar, Japanese cypress
which are a type of leaved tree.
Although the forestry cycle is plant, glow and harvest, nowadays
the Japanese government has promoted the cyclical use of the forests as circulative resources in Figure 5 in facing the all-out harvestof the plantation forests that will cause the vicious cycle in large
scale logging as well as deterioration of the forest.

3.1. Forestry Technology
The forestry is needed as follows:•• Forest information system to measure the timber.
•• Volume and the height of trees and to analyze the tree community in the forest.
•• Carrying system of the pot for the seedings using the drone etc.
•• Weeding robot [7] system for a steep mountain slope.
Since the Japanese mountain has the steep slope, the workers are
too taught to operate the planting and the weeding under the blazing the sun as well as the forcing various painful work postures.

4. CONCLUSION
Recently, although there are various issues in global, robotics has
potential for development and improvement to solve them using
networks and AI. This paper described that there are only a few
example of the agricultural and the forestry robots and systems

as the field robotics and sensing system. As the related issues, therobotic technologies are needed the robotic arm for factory automation or food factory with less teaching and the autonomous
motion using AI processing, the autonomous moving type robot
for iron ores and cokes in ironworks, cleaning robot for the drifted
garbage on the seashore and so on.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

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