Applications of Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems in Smart Agriculture: Potentials and Challenges for Nigeria

Food remains one of the most important primary human needs in all ages, and agriculture remains the primary, if not the sole source of real food. However, with ever increasing global population, advancements in knowledge, changes in taste, diet, food pattern and preferences; the demand for food has expanded from just having enough quantity of food, to having it in different desired qualities and forms and ensuring safety and health of the consumers. So the agricultural industry is increasingly becoming complex and highly tasking compared to traditional practice. Advancements in science and technology have brought a lot of useful innovation into agriculture, and this has resulted in what is now being referred to as smart agriculture or precision agriculture which simply implies the application of mechatronics, automation and artificial intelligence into agriculture. This includes countless areas of application involving both plant and animal farming, from production and all through the stages until final consumer either as food on the table or as industrial raw material for other products. As a way of illustrating in specific cases, some of the applications of mechatronics and autonomous systems in agriculture; this paper specifically discusses machine vision system for weed density estimation in cassava fields, machine vision system for sorting and grading of tomato fruits, wheeled mobile robot for site specific crop field management, smart weather stations for environment and crop field variables measurement, monitoring, prediction and control and solar recharged multipurpose electric tractor for smart farming. The paper concludes by discussing some of the potentials and challenges of Mechatronics and smart agriculture in present Nigerian context.

Keywords:

Mechatronics , Autonomous Systems , Smart Agriculture , Precision Agriculture , Machine Vision.