Can you dig it? The AgTech promise of robotics - but will the robot farmer please stand up?

Agricultural technology – aka AgTech or agritech – is a critical sector for any nation that has significant commercial farming and food production industries, both arable and pastoral. So, how can robotics and AI help? The answer is that the theoretical big-picture wins of AgTech are easy to state, but the real-world challenges are sometimes harder to back, meet, and solve, according to a Westminster policy conference.

Specialist robots could help harvest crops faster, more efficiently, more reliably, and at greater scale than the seasonal workers on which some farms rely – in many cases, migrants whose availability and desire to work can be dramatically affected by regional politics, conflicts, and socio-economic problems.

Automated harvesters of crops such as asparagus and mushrooms already exist, as do robots that can pick raspberries or strawberries from their plants in the field, while others can shake apples, oranges, and olives from trees. In some cases, autonomous ...