The Development of Rubber Tapping Machines in Intelligent Agriculture: A Review

Abstract

In the past decade, intelligent technologies have advanced rapidly, particularly due to improvements in automatic control, which have had a significant impact on forestry, as well as animal husbandry and the future of farm management. However, the degree of production and management mechanization in natural rubber plantations is low, especially since the methods of tapping still rely heavily on labor. The decrease of skilled rubber tappers and the increase in labor costs have led to the development of the mechanization of rubber tapping operations. The application of emerging intelligent agricultural technologies could provide an alternative in order to maximize the potential productivity of natural rubber. Based on this vision, we reviewed the literature on rubber tapping from the past decade for system implementation in rubber plantations. In this review, selected references on rubber tapping were categorized into several directions of research, including rubber tapping machines, the key technologies applied in tapping operations, and some related protective research, analyzing research works from 2010 to 2022 that focused on tapping methods. The review also discusses the application of intelligent agricultural technologies, such as the recognition of tapping trajectory and tapping path planning. A summary of challenges and future trends is also provided in this study. Based on the relevant research, the use of intelligent technologies in rubber tapping machines is still in its initial stage and has broad prospects. Through this study, we aim to provide a reference for researchers in the field of rubber tapping machines and thus to play a positive role in future rubber tapping.

Rich Dad and Poor Dad: Biomass Circularity Science Empathizing Rubber Smallholders

“…Shifting to the use of machinery can reduce overhead costs associated with estate maintenance and labor. A speeded tapping activity ensuring higher throughput by reducing human energy (and long-term wrist injury) from exerting pressure on the living trunk is one of the millennial innovations [75][76][77] availed for the rubber sector. Deployment of a more efficient tapping process allows labor size reduction, which would, in turn, reduce labor costs.…”

“…Expandable rubber-related TVET is envisioned for youths in smallholder families to start nurturing creative thinking skills related to rubber growing, rubber products, business models, and rubberwood as a commodity for creative earnings. Being hands-on in nature, rubber farms can be configured to serve as an experimentation ground to learn, develop problem-solving skills, and spawn innovations by needs, analogous to the tapping machine innovation by Kamil and team [75], Raghavendra [76], and Yang et al [77].…”

Rice Crop Counting Using Aerial Imagery and GIS for the Assessment of Soil Health to Increase Crop Yield

“…Another ground-breaking innovation with enormous promise in precision agriculture is the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) as sensing and/or communication platforms [ 19 ]. It was developed as a low-cost alternative technology for acquiring images, monitoring the environment, and achieving high spatial and temporal resolution.…”

A 3D Lidar SLAM System Based on Semantic Segmentation for Rubber-Tapping Robot

“…In the complex environment of rubber plantations, the performance of positioning systems based on GPS will be affected due to the cover of multilayered foliage and remote geographical location [6]. The existing autonomous navigation robots use different classes of sensors to build maps, including lidar, camera, ultrasonic sensor, and so on [7][8][9][10].…”