Robots Inspect Growing Crops

2021 - Volume #45, Issue #2, Page #39

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Prototype robots developed by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, are being used to inspect individual growing plants in the field, collecting data via a wheel-mounted buggy fitted with cameras and using artificial intelligence (AI).
    The Small Robot Company in England says it’s “re-imagining farming with robotics and artificial intelligence.” The Alphabet project’s buggy robot was designed “to see how plants were actually growing and responding to their environment.” The company says that over the past few years, its plant buggy has trundled through strawberry fields in California and soybean fields in Illinois, gathering high-quality images of each plant and counting and classifying every berry and every bean.
    The robot has the imaging capability to count how many soybean plants are growing in a field and has been used to collect a “sprout-to-harvest dataset” on melons, berries, lettuce, oilseeds, oats and barley. Alphabet developers describe their project as “a whole new field of technology called computational agriculture, which could unlock new new opportunities such as growing new crops that aren’t currently cultivated and intercropping, even growing multiple crops together.
    The Small Robot Company, founded in 2017, has developed three types of robots they call Tom, Dick and Wilma. Tom is a battery-powered scanning robot that specializes in crop monitoring and mapping. It can cover 20 hectares per day and collect 6 terabytes per day of information.
    Dick is the world’s first non-chemical robotic weeding machine. It uses electricity rather than chemicals to zap weeds.
    Wilma is described as “the boss.” The Wilma robot provides “per-plant intelligence” using precise information gleaned by Tom (the scouting robot) on the health of the plant. If Wilma identifies the plant as a weed, then Dick is dispatched to zap it.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Alphabet (https://x.company/projects/mineral/)
or Small Robot Company (www.smallrobotcompany.com).

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Robots Inspect Growing Crops CROPS Miscellaneous Prototype robots developed by Alphabet the parent company of Google are being used to inspect individual growing plants in the field collecting data via a wheel-mounted buggy fitted with cameras and using artificial intelligence AI The Small Robot Company in England says it’s “re-imagining farming with robotics and artificial intelligence ” The Alphabet project’s buggy robot was designed “to see how plants were actually growing and responding to their environment ” The company says that over the past few years its plant buggy has trundled through strawberry fields in California and soybean fields in Illinois gathering high-quality images of each plant and counting and classifying every berry and every bean The robot has the imaging capability to count how many soybean plants are growing in a field and has been used to collect a “sprout-to-harvest dataset” on melons berries lettuce oilseeds oats and barley Alphabet developers describe their project as “a whole new field of technology called computational agriculture which could unlock new new opportunities such as growing new crops that aren’t currently cultivated and intercropping even growing multiple crops together The Small Robot Company founded in 2017 has developed three types of robots they call Tom Dick and Wilma Tom is a battery-powered scanning robot that specializes in crop monitoring and mapping It can cover 20 hectares per day and collect 6 terabytes per day of information Dick is the world’s first non-chemical robotic weeding machine It uses electricity rather than chemicals to zap weeds Wilma is described as “the boss ” The Wilma robot provides “per-plant intelligence” using precise information gleaned by Tom the scouting robot on the health of the plant If Wilma identifies the plant as a weed then Dick is dispatched to zap it Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Alphabet https://x company/projects/mineral/ or Small Robot Company www smallrobotcompany com

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