[Kim Hyeong-seok Column] The Era of Crop Cultivation Management Robots Is Coming

[Kim Hyeong-seok Column] Professor Kim Hyeong-seok of Jeonbuk National University (Director of the Intelligent Robotics Research Institute)
 

Korean agriculture now stands at a critical crossroads. The rural population is shrinking at an unprecedented pace, and the average age of farmers has already surpassed the late 60s. 

Scenes of tears are repeated every busy farming season as people give up a year’s farming or reduce cultivation areas because they cannot find enough hands. The pillar that has sustained our agriculture through the tearful dedication and sacrifice of elderly farmers has now reached its limit.

What we must face even more painfully is the fact that this structural crisis can never be overcome with existing traditional agricultural machinery alone. Over the past century, tractors and combines were great inventions that dramatically increased agricultural productivity. 

However, they are deployed intensively only at specific times such as tilling and harvesting. During the 5 to 6 months of growth after sowing, when the greatest amount of labor is actually required, farmers still have to watch over the fields themselves. This is because the hard labor of pulling weeds, controlling pests and diseases, supplying water and fertilizer, checking crops one by one, and selecting harvests still remains the responsibility of people.

This is precisely where the mission and core task of future agriculture lie. What we need now is not another tractor or a larger combine. It is the introduction of “crop cultivation management robots” that can become the hands and feet of farmers and closely manage the entire crop growth process.

Cultivation management robots are not simple automated machines but a new concept of intelligent agricultural system equipped with the eyes and brain of artificial intelligence (AI), capable of making judgments on their own, moving freely through open fields, and performing highly difficult farm tasks. They are versatile intelligent agricultural robot systems in which various implements—such as weeding, pest control, fertilization, artificial pollination, pruning, growth diagnosis, and selective harvesting—can be selectively mounted on a single autonomous driving platform as needed. 

The global market has already begun this massive transition. Autonomous weeding robots from France’s Naïo Technologies are already moving across farms, and U.S.-based Carbon Robotics has commercialized technology in which AI identifies only weeds and removes them with lasers while spraying fertilizer and pesticides only where needed. Precision tasks once considered the exclusive domain of humans are rapidly being replaced by AI and robots.

However, currently developed technologies have the limitation of being biased toward only specific functions. They perform only a single task among weeding, pest control, and harvesting, and there is still a gap when it comes to robots that integrate and manage the entire process from sowing to harvest. The “crop cultivation management robot” we should pay attention to is the next-generation integrated solution that overcomes this limitation. It is about realizing a so-called “AI agricultural worker” that takes full charge of routine cultivation tasks by converging diverse functions onto a single intelligent platform.

Looking back at the history of agriculture, this evolution is inevitable. Agriculture moved beyond the first generation that relied on human and animal power, passed through second-generation mechanized agriculture centered on tractors, and developed into third-generation precision agriculture based on GPS and sensor technology. And now we stand at the threshold of fourth-generation intelligent agriculture, in which artificial intelligence judges situations and performs tasks on its own. If machines of the past replaced human muscle, cultivation management robots will replace human eyes, hands, and even judgment itself.

The destination of this evolution is clear. It is the realization of the era of “unmanned farming,” in which farmers are completely freed from hard labor. The abundant future is not far off, where numerous robots cooperate in the fields, AI systems control entire farms in real time, and farmers supervise everything through smartphone screens.

Agriculturally advanced countries such as the United States and Europe are already staking everything on the development of intelligent agricultural systems and making astronomical investments. The competitiveness of future agriculture will no longer be determined by “how much farmland one has,” but by “how advanced one’s AI and robotics technologies are.”

We do not have much time left. If we miss this golden time now, Korean agriculture will face a fatal compound crisis of extinction and collapsing productivity. But if we step forward first and take on bold challenges, we can leap into becoming an intelligent agricultural powerhouse leading the global unmanned farming market.

If 20th-century agriculture achieved mechanization through tractors, 21st-century agriculture will be completed through intelligence with crop cultivation management robots. Cultivation management robots are no longer a matter of choice, but a survival strategy on which the fate of Korean agriculture depends. If we do not prepare now, we may soon find ourselves in a position where we must import not only food but even “agricultural technology.” Now is the time to gather national capabilities for technological innovation that will secure the next 100 years of Korean agriculture.