Changing perceptions of crop robotics in social media

Perception is often key to the success of precision agriculture innovations. Social media is one window into unvarnished expressions of common perceptions. This study investigates how public discourse surrounding crop robotics evolved on X (formerly Twitter) from 2011 to 2024. Using a mixed-method approach, 6964 tweets were analyzed to: (1) understand how the volume of posts about crop robotics have changed, (2) assess the shifts in sentiments and subjectivity expressed about crop robotics in those messages, (3) identify key themes of discourse and (4) assess if a turning point was triggered by the Hands Free Hectare (HFH) demonstrations of using crop robots to achieve practical farming tasks. The analysis shows that 2016–2018 coincided with a marked inflection in the perception of crop robotics. During this period HFH and several other crop robot organizations demonstrated field crop production with autonomous machines. Prior to this period crop robotics was treated as a distant prospect, but after this period it became a current possibility. Tweets about crop robotics were sparse before 2016, increased sharply in 2017–2018, stayed high to 2023. Tweets became more positive and more factual post 2016. These patterns suggests that sight of retrofitted farm machines autonomously accomplishing HFH field tasks helped some people understand that crop robotics is a real, short-term possibility and that this helped change the societal perception of the technology and commercialization potential.