Robots in agriculture: prospects, impacts, ethics, and policy
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Robots in agriculture: prospects, impacts, ethics, and policy Robert Sparrow1 · Mark Howard1 Accepted: 19 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Agriculture is both the site of development of important new technologies and a key area of application of technologies developed elsewhere. It is little wonder, then, that many thinkers believe that progress in the science and engineering of robotics may soon change the face of farming. This paper surveys the prospects for agricultural robotics, discusses its likely impacts, and examines the ethical and policy questions it may raise. Along with the environmental and economic impacts of robots, political, social, cultural, and security implications of the introduction of robots that have received little attention in the larger literature on agricultural robotics are considered. Key policy choices necessary to meet the ethical challenges likely to arise as agricultural robots start to become used more widely, and to maximise the social, environmental, and economic benefits of robotics in agriculture, are highlighted. Keywords Agricultural robotics · Precision farming · Ethics · Automation/autonomy · Sustainability Agriculture is both the site of development of important new technologies and a key area of application of technologies developed elsewhere. It is little wonder, then, that many thinkers believe that progress in the science and engineering of robotics may soon change the face of farming. This paper surveys the prospects for agricultural robotics, discusses its likely impacts, and examines the ethical and policy questions it may raise. The first section of the paper highlights existing and proposed uses of robots in agriculture based on a review of the recent literature and discusses the prospects for robots going forward. The second section provides an account of the impacts and implications of the use of robots in agriculture that should be expected across a number of different domains. A novel feature of this section of the discussion is that, along with the environmental and economic impacts of robots, it includes political, social, cultural, and security implications of the introduction of robots that have received little attention in the larger literature on agricultural robotics. The third section examines the ethical questions that are likely to arise as agricultural robots start to become used more widely. The fourth section of the * Robert Sparrow [email protected] 1
School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
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Precision Agriculture
manuscript highlights key policy choices necessary to meet these ethical challenges and to maximise the social, environmental, and economic benefits of robotics in agriculture.
Prospects Any discussion of the prospects for robots in any domain must grapple with the problem that there is no universally agreed upon definition of a robot. A plausible definition is tha
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