Japan: Robots helping to reduce farmers’ and fishers’ workload!

Robots for farming and fishing (from The Yomiuri Shimbun)

“Research institutes and universities in Japan are developing robots to play an active part in the primary industries of agriculture and fisheries, which are suffering from aging workers and a lack of manpower. The robots are intended to alleviate the farmers’ workload and improve the quality of crops.

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry actively supports the move with the idea of “making good use of Japan’s robotics technology, which has long been utilized mainly in factories, now in the field of agriculture.”

The central government set a goal in January to quadruple the size of the robot market to ¥2.4 trillion by 2020, and the primary industries are positioned as a crucial field in which to utilize the robots.

The average age of farmers in Japan was 66.7 in 2014, with 64 percent of them 65 or older. Under the circumstances, there is great interest in using robots to make up for a shortfall in agricultural manpower.” (The Yomiuri Shimbun)

These are all great applications for Robotics Technology whose future seems bright. The next challenge is commercialisation! What do you think?

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Japan: Robots helping to reduce farmers’ and fishers’ workload!