“112% Higher Work Efficiency Than Skilled Farmers”… Autonomous Driving and AI Robots Emerge as Key Solutions to Rural Labor Shortages

[Korea Agricultural Technology Newspaper = Reporter Baek Cheol-hyun] As Korea’s agriculture stands at a crossroads amid the deepening climate crisis and rapid aging, cutting-edge smart agriculture technologies capable of resolving rural labor shortages and dramatically improving farm profitability have completed field demonstrations and are now beginning full-scale distribution.
On May 20, the Rural Development Administration held the ‘Smart Agriculture Excellent Technology Sharing Meeting’ at the Sangju Smart Farm Innovation Valley in North Gyeongsang Province, attended by project managers, R&D developers, private companies, and farmers. The event drew attention by proving with data the specific cost-saving effects and productivity improvement indicators when the developed technologies are applied to farms.
The most notable fields at the event were autonomous driving for farm work and unmanned pest control technology. GINT, a company specializing in smart mobility platforms, presented the ‘Pluva Auto Kit,’ which can be attached to existing agricultural machinery to add autonomous driving functions, and showcased outstanding on-site economic indicators.
Yoon Ju-young, director at GINT, emphasized the technology’s maturity, saying, “When Pluva Auto is applied to a tractor for plastic mulching work, work efficiency per unit time was found to increase by 112.5% compared with skilled farmers.”
Director Yoon then demonstrated the effect of reducing operating costs with specific figures. According to his presentation, labor costs that can be saved over one year amount to 7.44 million won for an onion work tractor.
In particular, the system can control operations so precisely that the average loss rate of 10% during farm work (based on skilled farmers) can be reduced to less than 3% when using Pluva Auto. In actual terms, when cultivating 1 hectare of garlic for one year, this reduction in loss rate alone can secure an additional annual income of 2.835 million won.
Also unveiled was the ‘PluvaSS,’ an unmanned autonomous pest-control robot for orchards, which also drew strong attention from participants. Combining cameras, GPS, and AI technology, this robot is capable of fully autonomous driving, can spray chemicals up to 8 meters, and can perform unmanned operations continuously for 24 hours, including at night and dawn.
In terms of operating costs, while using a conventional diesel sprayer requires about 1.4 million won per month in fuel costs, the monthly electricity bill for PluvaSS is only about 52,300 won. Although the initial introduction cost is 45 million won, considering labor savings and reduced work time, the payback period for the machine purchase was analyzed to be roughly 1 to 2 years.
The event also showed that growth analysis and automatic control technologies of innovative companies located in the Gimje and Sangju Smart Farm Innovation Valleys have advanced another step.
Seongho Corporation, which developed an image-based biological growth analysis system through a national R&D project, introduced ‘EVE Clever,’ an AI decision-making-based agricultural automatic management and harvesting robot. The technology involves training a phenomics camera with 800,000 growth data images and processing software to distinguish objects at the pixel level using segmentation techniques. When applied in the field, productivity of most greenhouse crops improved significantly, including cherry tomatoes by 120%, melons by 114%, and roses by 105%. As a result, farm income from melons tripled and tomato income increased by 75%, while greenhouse energy use instead decreased by 84.4%.
‘AirFog,’ introduced by Kyungnong, is a precision pest-control technology that sprays ultrafine particles of 50 micrometers (㎛) or less and completes greenhouse pest control in just 15 minutes. The chemicals remain suspended in the air for more than 40 seconds and adhere finely even to the backs of leaves, reducing labor by 83% compared with conventional manual sprayers. It is highly useful as a cooling function for lowering greenhouse temperatures during summer heat and for precise humidity control during winter.
SSL’s ‘Autonomous Irrigation System for Greenhouses’ operates based on collected data such as evapotranspiration and drainage volume. Its core is the realization of precise autonomous irrigation by converting the long empirical irrigation methods of skilled farmers into data. Analysis of farms that introduced the system showed that crop yield increased by 15% compared with existing irrigation methods, while production of highly marketable Grade G crops rose by 83%. Meanwhile, discarded crops decreased by 16%, and the average crop weight was measured 22% higher than under the previous method.
Amid the recent surge in oil prices and carbon neutrality policies, the ‘air-source heat pump’ proposed by ALTech also received strong attention. This technology, which pumps external heat and converts it into thermal energy, is rapidly emerging as an alternative to cope with rising energy costs.
Installation costs range from about 80 million won (based on 1,000 pyeong, self-funded) to 120 million won, so the initial cost burden is not small. However, for places that cultivate crops year-round, the savings in tax-free fuel are enormous. Strawberry farms were found to save 15 million won annually, while cherry tomato farms could save 30 million won annually in tax-free fuel costs.
An ALTech official explained, “In the case of strawberries, if diseases are prevented through nighttime dehumidification and shipment volume is increased, the investment recovery period is about 2 to 3 years. If summer tomatoes are produced and the average unit price is secured at more than double, the investment can be recovered in as little as 1 to 2 years.”