campusreview.com.au
What about robotics will attract young people back into the sector?
Robots and dinosaurs are two things that get young people
excited, at least for my kid. He’s about 4 years old right now. I think
there’s something just inherently sexy about this technology, and
intuitively interesting.
Beyond that, I think what’s good about robotics is that it’s quite
accessible to a wide range of people because it’s interdisciplinary.
You require people who come from a number of different
disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering,
computer science, physics and many other things. There are a
lot of different expertise you need to produce robot systems, to
understand them and to study them. You can access it from a
variety of different paths.
I think there’s something just inherently sexy
about this technology, and intuitively interesting.
You’re arguing that robotics will diversify the skills required
for agriculture.
Absolutely. Think of an iPhone. People write apps for their
smartphones. We’ll be needing to write apps for ag-robots. That’s one
skillset you think has nothing to do with agriculture but it does. Then,
there’s also a component to it where you don’t need to be on land all
the time. One of the things robots do is give access to information,
and that information can be transmitted over communication
networks. So, [when you’re] sifting through data analysis, making
decisions – all these things – you don’t necessarily need to be on the
farm. It breaks that tyranny of distance for a lot of people.
Again, back to my own story. One of my dreams now is to be
able to continue my family’s farm in Ohio, but I’m here in Sydney.
How I’ll do that, I don’t know. I don’t know whether I can. But at
least I can ask the question now. That’s not a question you could
even dream of asking five years ago.
How are robots used on farms now?
We’re just at the beginning of a big wave of robots. From a bigger
perspective, people have been studying robots for about 50 years.
It’s a young discipline compared with things like physics and
chemistry. But it’s old enough now to have a level of maturity that
allows robots to be useful in day-to-day things. Trends in selfdriving cars and flying robots and all these things are part of this
bigger picture of robots entering the real world.
In agriculture, we are building on all this scientific work, but we’re
at the phase now where there are start-ups. In the US, there are a
few start-ups running. Here in Australia, one of the projects that we
did was a collaboration between a farmer and researchers here at
the University of Sydney, and also at the Queensland University of
Technology. That project turned into a start-up company by the
farmer. It’s called Swarm Farm. This is founded by a guy who’s a
wheat farmer, and now he’s a robotics entrepreneur. They’re doing
well and will start commercial trials [in 2016]. That’s one of the first
of many that will be starting up and commercialising, and entering
the real world.
FACULTY FOCUS
Since the Australian agriculture sector has an ageing population,
how will robots help reduce the injuries associated with farming,
and help elderly farmers stay on their land?
Agriculture doesn’t have a terribly great track record when
it comes to occupational health and safety. There are
a lot of dangerous things that happen and a lot of big,
dangerous machinery.
In other industries where we’ve applied robotics, it has helped
bring people out of harm’s way. You don’t necessarily have to
have people operating or standing around big machines, they’ll be
driving themselves.
Here at the lab where I work, which is the Australian Centre
for Field Robotics, we’re one of the largest groups in world
working in outdoor robotics. We have a tight relationship with
industry over at least 15 years. We’ve worked in cargo handling,
for example, building robots that work in ports, picking up
big shipping containers, moving them around the port in a
completely automated way. We’re also working in mining; we’re
involved in building autonomous mines.
One of the things that we’ve observed is that the
occupational health and safety incidents have decreased. The
reason for that is that you are basically taking people out of
situations that are risky.
You touched on this before, but what other primary industries will
robotics boost?
So far, it’s been things like cargo handling, mining, some of the
big ones. I think agriculture is the next one to take off, and to be
transformed in the same ways some of these other ones are being
transformed. I think those are the big ones. There are probably
others, but self-driving cars are going to be a big deal for personal
transport, logistics and things like that. I think agriculture is the thing
I’m most excited about.
If robots do have a significant role to play in agriculture, does this
mean we soon won’t need people such as farm hands and labourers,
on the farm?
Yeah, I think so. The