To support the hypothesis that embracing robotics has the potential to address farming challenges and, at the same time, replace large and complex farm machinery, this article proposes designing a farm around a heterogeneous robotic system dubbed Structured Ecological Cultivation With Autonomous Robots in Agriculture (SPECULARIA). This multirobot system has mobile robots deployed to work just like in a warehouse, moving plants grown in containers to make sure every plant receives optimal care in ideal growing conditions. By structuring the work cell environment around a stationary dual-arm manipulator, the system can plan and execute procedures to control every plant’s growth and hygiene, from seed to harvest. Such a system surpasses current farming robots in scalability and versatility. We showcase compliance control algorithms combined with artificial intelligence (AI), which helps build a functional model of the plant. The same approach is used to program different plant treatments. Finally, we benchmark the proposed setup with a classical mobile manipulation approach to demonstrate its feasibility.
