Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Scientists Are Developing Robot Farmers

Gosia Wozniacka and Terence Chea
Seattle Times
July 15, 2013

On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds.

The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a machine that can “thin” a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.

The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization – fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they’re sensitive to bruising.


Read more

This article was posted: Monday, July 15, 2013 at 10:41 am

Tags: domestic news, food, technology


View the original article here


This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

No comments:

Post a Comment