Patent Trend of Unmanned and Automated Agricultural Production - Open Field Operation -

This study was conducted to determine the major patent and analyze the patent trend of unmanned and automated agricultural production for the open field operation. As a result of conducting a search for patent applications related to these technologies, 1,080 valid patents were selected by evaluating the relevance of the patents and removing noise patents. As a result of the country-based analysis using the selected valid patents, it was found out that the largest number of patent applications were filed in the United States with 541 cases, followed by Japan with 326 cases, the European Union with 128 cases, and Korea with 85 cases. Upon classifying the valid patents into core technology, the path generation and tracking technology accounts for 33% with 353 cases; the implementing control with environmental condition technology accounts for 22% with 236 cases; the robot design technology accounts for 21% with 228 cases; the plant and environment sensing technology accounts for 19% with 206 cases; the yield and quality monitoring technology accounts for 5% with 58 cases. Finally, 10 core patents were selected by performing a patent index evaluation. The United States registered all of the 10 core patents. The results showed that Korea falls behind in the open field-related unmanned and automated agricultural production, compared to other developed agricultural countries.