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Robots for Precision Agriculture
From
New Scientist – Automation is the key to precision farming. Specifically, say agricultural engineers, precision farming needs robot farmers.
Soon, we might see fields with agribots that can identify individual seedlings and coax them along with tailored drops of fertiliser and measured sips of water. Other machines would distinguish weeds and dispatch them with a microdot of pesticide, a burst from a flame gun or a shot from a high-power laser. These machines will also be able to identify and harvest all kinds of ripe vegetables.
Robots could bring major changes, too, in jobs and how we work, in the soil and its quality, and in how much energy, and thus carbon, goes into farming. They could reduce pollution and water use. The most visible change, though, for ordinary people, could be in how farmland looks. Crops could be planted in small, geometrically arranged fields, while fruit farms are filled with arrays of two-dimensional trees. Robofarmers might even influence the type of fruit and vegetables that reach our shelves.
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2012-11-02 03:24:01 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/11/robots-for-precision-agriculture.html
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