Initial Possibilities for Robotic Cotton Harvest

Stationary robots are already accomplishing many critical industrial manufacturing steps. As these robots are combined with other technologies (self-driving cars, high-throughput phenotyping, remote sensing and data analytics) agricultural efficiency will be a major beneficiary. Commercial autonomous robots currently provide in-row weeding and both ground and aerial spraying. There will be substantial investment in agricultural robots to accomplish weed control tasks since herbicide resistant weeds are a threat to multiple crops on a billion plus acres. However, investment will likely lag for small-acreage, unique-applications such as cotton harvesting. This presentation will review the early stage design of cotton harvest systems that hopefully can be developed as attachments for commercial multiple task Ag Robots, including a plan for the economic analysis of these systems and a review of studies to access the potential fiber quality benefits from frequent (2 times per week) harvest.