Intelligent autonomous pollination for future farming - a micro air vehicle conceptual framework with artificial intelligence and human-in-the-loop

Chen, Y. and Li, Y. (2019) Intelligent autonomous pollination for future farming - a micro air vehicle conceptual framework with artificial intelligence and human-in-the-loop. IEEE Access, 7, pp. 119706-119717. (doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2937171)

Abstract

Food security is one of the societal challenge topics. As one-third of all food consumed by humans relies on animal pollination currently, this research provides an emerging solution to food supply reduction caused by population shrinking of natural pollinators, so as to reduce its impact on ecological relationships, ecosystem conservation and stability, genetic variation in the crop plant community, floral diversity, specialisation and evolution. This paper develops a conceptual technical roadmap of autonomous pollination for future farming using robotic micro air vehicle pollinators (MPrs). The research provides new insights into autonomous design and manufacture and into possible ways to increase the production efficiency which shortens the time from lab to market. The autonomous MPrs are realized using artificial intelligence and human expertise in the loop for smart agricultural industry. Further, this work identifies scientific and technological advances that are expected to translate, within proposed regulatory frameworks, into the pervasive use of MPrs for agricultural applications and beyond.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Li, Professor Yun
• Authors: Chen, Y., and Li, Y.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy
• Journal Name: IEEE Access
• Publisher: IEEE
• ISSN: 2169-3536
• ISSN (Online): 2169-3536
• Published Online: 23 August 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 The Authors
• First Published: First published in IEEE Access 7: 119706-119717
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License