Farming With Robots: How Smart Agriculture Is Shaping the Future Farm

Agriculture has long been a pillar of human life, with most of its processes, from cultivation to management to harvesting, carried out by human labor. Recently, however, worsening climate change and a shrinking rural workforce have made it harder to sustain stable farming using traditional methods alone.

Smart agriculture has emerged as a response to these challenges, and it continues to advance both in Korea and abroad. Smart farming refers to a form of agriculture that incorporates advanced technologies such as information and communication technology (ICT), the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve crop productivity and quality.

As digital agriculture takes hold, farming is shifting toward automation. Sensors and AI now help manage the conditions crops need to grow, supporting stable production, while equipment such as AI robots, autonomous farm machinery, and drones is taking over tasks once done by hand, improving overall work efficiency.

So how far has smart farm technology in Korea come, and what kinds of robots might be used in farming going forward? This article looks at how smart agriculture is shaping the future of agriculture, and explores actuators, the core technology behind the stable movement of farming robots.

How Is Smart Agriculture Evolving?

Digital agriculture is moving away from methods that relied on a farmer’s experience and judgment, toward approaches built on data and artificial intelligence. While initially focusing on enhancing convenience through remote management of the farm environment, the industry is recently advancing toward a stage of unmanned operation by automating farming tasks using AI based decision making and farming robots.

Early smart farms began by digitizing farm environments and enabling remote management. A typical setup involved sensors installed on the farm measuring conditions like temperature and humidity, with workers then using the collected data to remotely control farm equipment through a PC or smartphone. This reduced the burden of having to visit the site in person and greatly improved convenience, but decisions about setting and managing the right conditions for crop growth still depended heavily on the farmer’s own experience and judgment.

Smart farms that incorporate big data and AI emerged to address this limitation. As growth and environmental data collected by farm sensors accumulates, farms build operating systems based on that big data. AI can analyze the data and recommend cultivation conditions and management approaches, such as the ideal temperature and humidity, timing for irrigation, and how to respond to pests and disease. This allows workers unfamiliar with ICT, as well as young farmers with limited experience, to make more informed decisions.

Smart agriculture technology has recently taken this a step further, with robots now carrying out tasks like pest control, harvesting, and transport based on AI’s decisions. As farm sensors and equipment, big data based decision systems, and automated machinery become connected into a single operating system, an unmanned farming environment that minimizes direct human involvement is expected to become a reality.

Farming Robots Building The Unmanned Farm

Development of smart agriculture equipment is also progressing actively in Korea. The Rural Development Administration of Korea, for example, is researching agricultural robots designed to automate a range of farm tasks, including pest control and harvesting.

A representative example is the research and development of pest control robots targeting tomato farms. This autonomous piece of equipment sprays pesticide inside enclosed greenhouses without requiring a worker to be present, with the goal of protecting farmers’ safety and improving work efficiency. To ensure stable operation in the field, its performance is being verified through repeated testing that checks for malfunctions and measures maximum operating time, confirming its potential for use in real farming conditions.

Alongside pest control robots, agricultural robots that automatically perform harvesting tasks are also under development. Using cameras and AI to determine when fruit is ready to harvest, these robots use robotic arms to pick crops without damaging them, and researchers are working to expand a single unit’s capabilities, such as pollination and harvesting, by equipping it with multiple attachments.

While a variety of farming robots are being developed to enable unmanned agriculture, adapting them for real world use requires accounting for the specific conditions found in Korean farming. Because small scale farms make up a large share of Korean farming, growers often need to maximize yield within a limited area, which means crops are frequently planted close together. Agricultural robots must therefore be able to move through these narrow spaces while carrying out their tasks.

For this reason, agriculture automation equipment needs a compact structure that allows it to move smoothly even in tight working conditions, and making a robot smaller requires using its internal space efficiently. Alongside the drive components, a robot’s interior also has to accommodate sensors, batteries, and other parts, all within limited space. Among these, the actuator is a key component that generates the torque needed to drive the equipment, and its size and structure directly affect the overall freedom of the design.

As a result, robot actuators used in smart agriculture need a slim structure that can be applied flexibly within tight spaces, while still delivering sufficient drive performance.

The BCSA Series: Supporting Efficient Agricultural Robot Design

For agriculture automation equipment to operate reliably in the field, it needs drive performance suited to its working environment. That means checking whether the actuator, a core drive component, can perform well across a variety of field conditions.

Because agriculture equipment has to perform repetitive tasks over long periods, durability under heavy loads is essential. The BCSA actuator uses a cycloidal structure to distribute load across a broad contact surface between gears, improving the structural durability of the drive unit. This reduces the strain placed on any single gear, easing wear and helping extend the component’s lifespan.

Building on this cycloidal technology, the BCSA actuator is designed to deliver strong torque output even within a thin form factor. This makes it possible to maintain stable drive performance even in high-torque tasks such as transporting and loading harvested crops.

A slim structure also allows for more efficient placement of components. Reducing the thickness of the drive unit frees up space for other elements like sensors and batteries, giving robot designers greater flexibility.

In particular, using that extra space to expand battery capacity can extend operating time and reduce downtime for charging, a meaningful advantage in a future smart agriculture environment centered on automated equipment operating over long periods.

Meanwhile, for farming robots to be widely adopted in actual fields, not only product performance but also a stable supply of components is required. Maintaining consistent quality from early development and performance testing through to actual deployment on farms requires being able to reproduce internal components with the same performance and specifications every time. This means an essential part like the actuator needs to be evaluated not just on drive performance and durability, but also on manufacturing factors such as ease of assembly and production efficiency.

Looking at cycloidal reduction structures from this angle, a typical pin gear type design tends to require more components, including pins, as the reduction ratio increases, and demands greater precision during assembly. This can make the manufacturing process more complex and lead to variation between individual units, creating challenges for maintaining manufacturing efficiency and consistent quality at scale.

The BCSA V4 addresses this with Pinless cycloidal technology, which eliminates the pin components altogether. Simplifying the component structure results in an even thinner design, while fewer parts make assembly easier and improve production efficiency. It is also designed to minimize unit to unit variation, helping ensure consistent quality even during mass production.

In short, the BCSA series is an actuator that combines a slim structure and high torque to improve both the spatial efficiency and working performance of agricultural robots, while also accounting for durability and production efficiency. It can handle repetitive, heavy load tasks reliably, and offers an efficient drive solution across the entire process, from prototyping through mass production and use in real farming conditions.

Research and development in smart agriculture continues to move forward, and as systems become more advanced and more specialized talent enters the field, smart farm models suited to Korean farming are expected to keep evolving. As this happens, demand is likely to grow for slim actuators that can be adapted across a wide range of equipment.

We specialize in developing robot actuators, and we draw on our accumulated technical expertise and field experience to propose drive solutions suited to each customer’s development goals. If you are reviewing actuators for a compact farming robot, or wondering whether the BCSA could work for equipment you’re developing, feel free to reach out through our website. Bonsystems would be glad to help.

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References

1. Making Agriculture Smart: What Is Smart Agriculture?
2. Rural Development Administration Reviews Expansion of Unmanned Greenhouse Farm Robots
3. A 3,400-Pyeong Farm With Two Employees: “Everyone Will Soon Eat Fruit Harvested by Robots”
4. Report: A Robotic Arm Picks Tomatoes, A Preview of Korea’s Smart Farms
5. Making Smart Farms Even Smarter, Part 1
6. Developing a Smart Greenhouse Pest Control Robot for Better Results and Worker Safety
7. Growing Strawberries Underground in the City: “Bees” Replaced by “Robots” (KBS, February 21, 2025)