Agricultural robotics: what the field really says [FRENCH MARKET]

The session brought together a panel of experts from four sectors — arable farming, fruit growing, viticulture, and market gardening — to address a simple but rarely asked question with such candour: does agricultural robotics truly meet the needs of the field?

The answer is nuanced. And that is precisely what makes this session so valuable.

[Cross-Sector] Labour, Weeding, Spraying: Three Shared Challenges

Regardless of the sector represented, the same major issues keep coming up. Nicolas Bastien, from Fermes Leader, sums up the situation for arable farming well: intervention windows are narrowing, heavy machinery is compacting soils, and labour is becoming increasingly scarce. These are concerns fully shared by Thierry Massias, vegetable crop advisor at the Chamber of Agriculture of Hautes-Pyrénées, and by Diane Nacouzi from CTIFL for fruit growing, who notes that harvesting costs can account for up to 50% of total production costs.

Weeding receives particular attention across all sectors. While solutions exist for between-row weeding, in-row weeding remains a major technical challenge in arable farming, market gardening, and fruit production alike. Autonomous spraying is the other key frontier: in viticulture especially, Christophe Auvergne, agri-equipment advisor at the Chamber of Agriculture of Hérault, stresses the importance of responsiveness to disease, particularly in difficult weather conditions.

"If we can have something operating autonomously day and night, very quickly, lighter, moving more easily through the crop — that could bring real added value." — Christophe Auvergne

[Nut Growing] A Specific Sector with Shared Challenges

The hazelnut sector, represented by Henri Moncassin, administrator at Unicoq and treasurer of his CUMA, illustrates well how common challenges converge while adding constraints specific to his own production. Although the cooperative first integrated artificial intelligence at the industrial level for sorting and grading hazelnuts in response to declining quality in recent years, field-level needs are equally pressing: treatments, mowing, sucker management, all demanding significant labour hours and staffing.

Henri highlights a little-known quality challenge: certain treatments ideally need to be applied during the flowering period, from December to February, in conditions where it is simply impossible to take a tractor through the orchard.

"Perhaps tomorrow, a much smaller robotic solution with lighter application equipment will allow treatments to be carried out with real quality implications." — Henri Moncassin

A concrete illustration of how lightweight robotics could open up intervention windows that are currently out of reach.

Ongoing Trials, Encouraging Results

On the technical institute side, testing is accelerating. Sylvie Nicollier from Arvalis describes trials on mechanical weeding in cereal crops, at 15 cm inter-row spacing, as well as autonomous maize sowing experiments at the Digifermes. The goal: to assess not only technical feasibility but also the techno-economic dimension — an essential consideration before envisaging large-scale deployment.

In viticulture, Christophe Gaviglio, experimentation engineer at IFV, draws on a decade of experience with weeding robots. Progress in terms of precision and consistency is real.

"Unlike a human operator, the machine does not get tired. Once it is properly calibrated, it is extremely repeatable." — Christophe Gaviglio

Yet he also points to an important limitation: work rates remain insufficient to ensure satisfactory profitability given current machine prices.

Jean-François Larrieu, facilitator of the Arbonovateurs group in Tarn-et-Garonne, offers a revealing insight into what farmers actually want: when an expression of interest survey was launched in 2022 covering three topics — weeding automation, vole control, and robotics — it was the automation of existing tractors that came out on top, ahead of autonomous robots. An important distinction, reminding us that farmers think first from the standpoint of their existing investments.

Not Substitution, but Complementarity

The conclusion emerging from this session is perhaps the most important takeaway for the future of the sector. Marie-Flore Doutreleau puts it clearly: a robot is not a tractor, and comparing the two is a fundamental mistake from the outset. Just as the robot vacuum cleaner did not replace the traditional vacuum but created new uses, agricultural robotics fits within a logic of complementarity rather than outright substitution.

Early adopters confirm this: the word that consistently comes up is "adaptation". And today, none of them would go back.

To support the adoption of robots on farms, it is essential to share concrete, documented field feedback. Farmers need real-world references, techno-economic data, and organisational examples to assess whether these technologies make sense in their own context.

This is precisely GOFAR's mission: to highlight and share real-world usage feedback through our activities — matchmaking between manufacturers and industry players, FIRA events and technical days, the GOFAR Tour, the Agricultural Robotics News media platform, the robotics catalogue, and more — making genuine cases of agricultural robotics integration visible and accessible.

Watch the full session in replay!