A humanoid robot that walked the corridors and shook hands with delegates at the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) World Congress in Osijek, Croatia, on September 17 is being pitched as a future farm worker for the "three Ds" of agricultural labour: dull, dirty and dangerous.

The prototype belongs to Croatian technology company Abysalto. Its head of marketing, Maja Pavlinusic, said the machine is a Chinese-made Unitree G1 that is not yet sold for commercial use; only laboratories and companies doing research and development in robotics and artificial intelligence can buy one. Dull tasks such as picking items up and placing them elsewhere, and work that is unsanitary or hard for people to manage, are the first jobs envisaged.

Nenad Mandic, Abysalto's head of artificial intelligence, said there are only "hundreds" of such humanoids in the world today, nearly all of them in research, mostly in China with some in the United States and the EU. He expects that to change quickly: "I would say in two to three years we will see many more in the industry including in agriculture and in 5-10 years, this [robot] will become a standard."

Asked why a human shape rather than a robotic arm, Mandic said an arm is more efficient at a single task but "so many jobs are designed to be done by humans". Voice command is being developed, and researchers are also working on robots that respond to gestures — a farmer standing in a field, he suggested, could simply signal to the robot how to help.

The G1 on show weighs about 40kg, can lift up to 15kg and runs for roughly two hours on a charge, a figure the company expects to improve; taller and heavier models exist. Pavlinusic said operators set the robots' limits in space and task, so people "shouldn't be afraid of them". Mandic added that humanoids "are designed to help humans and to act in human space".

On price, Mandic said the robots are not yet a commodity like a tractor or combine. Demonstration models sell for around $50,000, the hardware generally costs tens of thousands of dollars, and the software is a further considerable investment — though he expects prices to fall as the market grows. Breifne O'Brien reported from the congress for Agriland.

Source: Agriland