ABSTRACT
The world population has been forecast to increase drastically to 9 billion by the year 2050. Hence, there is an urgent demand to explore every necessary opportunity to advance sustainable agricultural techniques and solutions that could help in providing food for the ever-increasing population. One of the greatest challenges affecting global food production is the adverse long-term toxicological effect of indiscriminate synthetic pesticides use on the environment, and human health via their bioaccumulation as residue on/in food crops. Therefore, the application of a new generation of robotic system and automation could promote sustainable pest- and disease-control systems that could revolutionize the continuous utilization of agricultural inputs. This may also have positive implications for improving crop quality, promoting the health status of production operators, for agricultural food safety and maintenance of a healthy environment. Detailed information on processes involved in the identification of pests and diseases, assessment of the severity of their economic damage, impact of the implementation of the integrated pest-management model, and the procedures involved in the assessment of the success of the integrated pest-management strategies have been highlighted in scientific literature. Some innovations in heterogeneous ground and aerial robotics together with sensors, satellites, and drones are being used to capture the picture or to identify plants that were having disease and pest challenges . A more accurate prediction of plant and environmental healthiness is now dependent on the use of controlled decisions derived from end-effector algorithms of smartphone apps, normalized difference vegetation index satellite, and drones or robots.
