Economic efficiency of implementing robotic solutions and their impact on the ecology of the region

Federal Scientific Center «Kabardino-Balkarian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences FSBSI, st. Balkarova 2, 360004, Nalchik, Russian Federation

Abstract

The relevance of creating a system of robotic plant protection is due to the need to preserve the planned yield and increase its competitiveness in the conditions of food security of the country and the region. Taking into account the decrease in the number of specialists and staff shortage in agriculture, related, among other things, to heavy physical work, the issue of transition to unmanned technologies in crop production becomes important. The paper describes the concept of an intelligent distributed system of robotic plant protection. The presented concept implies the creation of a multi-agent system consisting of autonomous mobile robots for various purposes: monitoring of crop condition, application of active substances (fertilisers and pesticides) and supplying the system with chemicals and energy. In addition, the paper describes the structure of autonomous mobile robots included in the plant protection system. The algorithm of the system operation is described, in particular, the question of full automation of the process of data collection and application of necessary chemicals to plantings is considered. The described system is based on the concept of “smart field”, when the main focus of agrotechnical operations from the whole field is switched to each individual plant. The use of a multi-agent system and open data exchange protocols will allow the proposed system to be easily scalable, and minor modifications to some of the autonomous robots included in the system will allow them to work with other crops. In addition, the article provides an economic assessment of the effectiveness of the introduction of such intelligent plant protection systems on the example of the introduction of an autonomous robot for monitoring and protection of maize crops.