Agricultural Robots are Gaining Momentum

For further information please refer to our report Agricultural Robots and Drones 2018-2038: Technologies, Markets, Players. This report develops a detailed roadmap of how robotic technology will enter into different aspects of agriculture and how it will change the way farming is done. It will provide 20-year forecasts for 16 categories including static milking robots, mobile dairy farm robotics, autonomous agricultural small robots (data scouts, weeding and multi-platform), autonomous tractors (simple guidance, autosteer, fully unmanned autonomy), robotic implements (simple and highly intelligent), robotic strawberry harvesting, robotic fresh fruit picking, and agricultural drones (data scouts, data services/analytics, multi-functional drones, unmanned spraying helicopters).

Will tractors evolve towards full unmanned autonomy?

Tractor guidance and autosteer are well-established technologies. In the short to medium terms, both will continue their growth thanks to improvements and cost reductions in RTK GPS technology. Indeed, we estimate that around 700k tractors equipped with autosteer or tractor guidance will be sold in 2028. We also assess that tractor guidance sales, in unit numbers and revenue, will peak around 2027-2028 before a gradual decline commences. This is because the price differential between autosteer and tractor guidance will narrow, causing autosteer to attract more of the demand. Note that our model accounts for the declining cost of navigational autonomy (e.g., level 4 for autosteer).

Unmanned autonomous tractors have also been technologically demonstrated with large-scale market introduction largely delayed - not by technical issues but by regulation, high sensor costs and the lack of farmers' trust. This will start to slowly change from 2024 onwards. The sales will however only slowly grow. We estimate that around 40k unmanned fully-autonomous (level 5) tractors will be sold in 2038. The take up will remain slow as users will only slowly become convinced that transitioning from level 4 to level 5 autonomy is value for money. This process will be helped by the rapidly falling price of the automaton suite.

Overall, our model suggests that tractors with some degree of autonomy will become a $27Bn market at the vehicle level (our model also forecasts the added value that navigational autonomy provides).

The rise of fleets of small agricultural robots

Autonomous mobile robots are causing a paradigm shift in the way we envisage commercial and industrial vehicles. In traditional thinking, bigger is often better. This is because bigger vehicles are faster and are thus more productive. This thinking holds true so long as each vehicle requires a human driver. The rise of autonomous mobility is however upending this long-established notion: fleets of small slow robots will replace or complement large fast manned vehicles.

These robots also appear like strange creatures at first: they are small, slow, and lightweight. They therefore are less productive on a per unit basis than traditional vehicles. The key to success however lies in fleet operation. This is because the absence of a driver per vehicle enables remote fleet operation. Our model suggests that there is a very achievable operator-to-fleet-size ratio at which such agrobots become commercially attractive in the medium term.

We are currently at the beginning of the beginning. Indeed, most examples of such robots are only in the prototypes or early stage commercial trial phase.  These robots however are now being trailed in larger numbers by major companies whilst smaller companies are making very modest sales.  The infection point, our models suggest, will arrive in 2024 onwards. At this point, sales will rapidly grow. These small agrobot fleets themselves will also grow in capability, evolving from data acquisition to weeding to offering multiple functionalities. Overall, we anticipate a market as large as $900M and $2.5Bn by 2028 and 2038, respectively. This will become a significant business but even it will remain a small subset of the overall agricultural vehicle industry.

Implements will become increasingly intelligent

Implements predominantly perform a purely mechanical functional today. There are some notable exceptions, particularly in organic farming. Here, implements are equipped with simple row-following vision technology, enabling them to actively and precisely follow rows.

This is however changing as robotic implements become highly intelligent. Indeed, early versions essentially integrated multiple computers onto the implement. These are today used for advanced vision technology enabled by machine learning (e.g., deep learning). Here, the intelligent implements learn to distinguish between crops and weeds as the implement is pulled along the field, enabling them to take site-specific weeding action.

We anticipate that such implements will become increasingly common in the future. They are currently still in their early generations where the software is still learning, and the hardware is custom built and ruggedized by small firms. Recent activities including acquisitions by major firms suggest that this is changing.