抄録
The first plant factory in Japan was built more than 20 years ago, and industrial stage of plant factory moves to the development stage from the earlier stage. In the meantime, various automation systems have been developed for the purpose of increasing harvests, saving labor, or decreasing the workload. In this review, we examine these subjects and the range of automation devices, and look at examples of some of the related problems that companies have faced to date. Currently, the amount of time required to produce one leafy lettuce in an artificial plant factory is estimated to be 2.2 minutes. With full mechanization, this time will be reduced to 0.3 minutes. However, the investment in equipment is limited when economic efficiency is taken into consideration. The candidates for mechanization should be carefully selected so as to be compatible with shipping operations; for example, systems that involve less leaf picking and packaging, and fewer cleaning and sterilization operations for cultivation instruments and tools used in the production of 10,000 or fewer lettuces per day.
