Americas First Robot Farm

Farming, although admittedly a huge industry is a job it’s surprising we still have to manually do in a lot of areas. Obviously, farmers are not what they used to be and we do have many well-refined tools and methods of both growing and harvesting that were previously unavailable, but humans are still the driving force. With this new robot farm however that may soon change. This new AI system has been developed primarily due to the substantial labor shortages along with higher demands for produce faced by the farming industry.

Robot Farm Will Produce More Food

It has this far been claimed by the inventors of the system that this California based AI is capable of growing 30 times what the typical farm would be able to grow, using soilless hydroponic processes and techniques designed to maximize space usage. This could well be the answer to agricultural industries major problems that are growing bigger every day. These problems although scoffed at by a few have also caught the attention of major investors, who offered more than 10 billion dollars last year, a 29 percent increase from 2016!

Robot Farm Faster Than Humans

The system utilizes a 2000-sq grow space, using pots measuring 4 feet by 8 feet. These bright white machines are called the grow modules and this is essentially where all the magic happens. All of the heavy lifting and serious work is done by the machines much faster than any human could. The devices also use sensors to detect “Angus”, who is a type of robot who zips around doing chores and is described as “incredibly intelligent” by Iron Ox co-founder Brandon Alexander (Iron Cox develop these devices). Angus is around to sense how well grow modules are doing and transport them over to a processing area when they are deemed ready.

Robot Farm Helper Has Vision

Once in the processing area, an also autonomous arm grips the pots of the plants and transports them very carefully in order to avoid causing damage to the actual plant. The developers of these devices stressed how difficult this was to achieve as it requires the AI to be able to recognize just where to grab on the plant in order to not damage it. To achieve this the arm can “see” using two sets of 3D cameras along with sensors allowing it to detect any diseases, pests or insects.

All of the AI systems are connected and controlled by a sort of brain where they send all collected data about the systems and plants. A team of plant scientists constantly oversees this brain. With farming precision is absolutely key, with certain products users will accept systems faults but when it comes to what they eat no exceptions will be made. Obviously some actual farm workers may be worried about reading this on whether these machines will replace them one day, and unfortunately, the early signs do not look good at all for farm manual labor.