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The purpose of this paper is to provide details of recent developments in agricultural robots with an emphasis of those that address labour shortages and environmental issues.

Following an introduction which highlights some of the challenges facing the agricultural industry, this discusses recent robotic agricultural vehicle developments and the enabling technologies. It then provides examples of terrestrial and airborne robots employed in precision agricultural practices. Finally, brief conclusions are drawn.

Traditional, labour-intensive and environmentally harmful agricultural practices are not sustainable in the long term, and if food supply is to meet future demand, radical changes will be required. Exploiting recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), agricultural equipment manufacturers are developing robotic vehicles in response to labour shortages. Precision agricultural practices will mitigate many of the detrimental environmental impacts and can also reduce the reliance on manpower. Weeding robots which reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides have been commercialised by a growing number of companies and again exploit AI techniques. Drones equipped with imaging device are playing an increasingly important role by characterising agricultural and crop conditions, thereby allowing highly targeted agrochemical application.

This illustrates how the agricultural industry is adopting robotic technology in response to the need to increased productivity while mitigating the problems of shortages of labour and environmental degradation.

Showrooming presents a complex and evolving challenge to retail managers, as it signifies the emergence of new forms of exchange rules. The purpose of this research is to investigate how factors responsible for information search and evaluation affect showrooming and also consider the consumer mindset as a moderator.

This research undertakes three experimental designs to investigate how the push (i.e. assortment size), pull (i.e. price discount), and mooring (i.e. sunk cost) factors influence consumers' showrooming intention. Specifically, consumers' maximizing tendency plays the role of moderator.

The results reveal that push, pull, and mooring factors are significantly related to consumers' showrooming intention. Furthermore, the findings show that maximizers have higher showrooming intention than satisficers in the context of the push, pull, and mooring factors.

By integrating the push-pull-mooring framework and the maximizing mindset theory, this research proposes a novel research model and the empirical testing results support six hypotheses. The findings add to the body of knowledge in showrooming behavior by taking consumer mindset into account. The results also provide implications for practitioners to develop their retail strategies.