3 New Farm Bots Programmed to Pick, Plant and Drive

Intelligent, manned machines aren’t just for warplanes and border guards—they can be found on the farm too. Increasingly, agro-bots are taking laborious tasks out of the farmer’s helper’s hands, and saving time and money in the process. Here are three robotic farm servants who may right now be working in a field near you.

By Erik Sofge

Published in the September 2009 issue.

Agricultural robots are already among us: mowing grass, spraying pesticides and monitoring crops. For example, instead of regularly dousing an entire apple orchard with chemicals, towed sensors find diseases or parasites with infrared sensors and cameras, and spray only the affected trees. But could a robot wholly replace a migrant worker? The idea appeals to farmers, because temporary labor can arrive one season but go elsewhere the next, leaving tons of fruits and vegetables to wither. Relying on illegal immigrants can also be a legal liability. Harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity for many crops, but even advocates say that no one has built a machine that comes close to matching the sensory motor control of humans. That is poised to change as sensors and software become cheaper and more advanced. “In the next five years or so, we’ll see robots out in the field,” says Tony Stentz, associate director of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. “And they’ll lose their novelty. To the farmers, it’ll just be another tractor, with no one in the cab.”

Smart Gardeners

MIT

Developed for a robotics class at MIT, autonomous gardeners use equipment mounted on the base of a Roomba. Sensors in the soil alert the robot, which waters plants and can use an articulated arm to pick any fruit it sees.

Prospects: MIT staff have no immediate plans for commercialization, but they are continuing to create more autonomy in the bots. Future systems could compare earlier images of the same plants over time to detect diseases or parasites.

Self-Guided Farm Equipment

Carnegie Mellon University Field Robotics Center

Carnegie Mellon University’s Field Robotics Center is testing an automated utility cart equipped with laser range- finders to find its way through a Pennsylvania apple orchard, towing sensors that track the progress of the crop.

Prospects: The project is at least three years from completion. Researchers say the key to the future of industrial farm robots is keeping costs down by adapting existing commercial vehicles instead of building new ones.

Snippy the Grapevine Pruner

Vision Robotics Vineyard Products

Vision Robotics Vineyard Products designed Snippy to prune as many as 400 acres of grapevines per season, at around half the cost of manual labor. Mounted cameras create a 3D model to tell the bot’s arms where to cut.

Prospects: The first prototype pruner has been in field tests since March, and a second one should be operational by this fall. A majority of the project’s funding comes from interested grape growers and vineyard owners, making Snippy an agbot pioneer.