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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 19 2017, @11:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the where-is-the-jane-robot? dept.

When you've got a crop full of plants growing in a field, inspecting each and every one of them can be very monotonous work. That's why scientists are working on plant-inspecting robots, that perform the task autonomously. Most of those 'bots are wheeled, however, meaning that they could get stuck or fall over – plus they might get in the way of other machinery. With that in mind, scientists from Georgia Tech have created a prototype robot that swings over the plants like a monkey. It's called Tarzan.

The idea is that in fields where a Tarzan robot is being used, each row of plants will have a tightly-strung guy wire running overhead. Using its two "arms," the robot will swing itself along that wire, imaging the plants below with its built-in cameras as it does so. When it gets to the end of one row, it will just swing over to the wire running above the next row over, and start making its way back down it. That process will be repeated, until it covers the whole field.

It does sound like a better option than a wheeled robot--muck in the fields can get pretty deep.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:00AM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:00AM (#496626) Journal

    ignorance of agriculture's scale

    Not to mention the over expectations of the benefit of plant images.
    Nobody has time to look at those pictures of individual plants.
    Any computer analysis you can do on the photos is going to be too costly, and stringing the wired will never pay for itself.

    So just send up the drone and image the field and call it a day.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 20 2017, @11:58AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday April 20 2017, @11:58AM (#496806) Journal

    I agree with you there. They have already used thermal imaging and similar means to look at how a crop is doing mid-season.

    So using a robot like this to image crops doesn't make much sense. But it's cool they got it to brachiate.

    Farmers do use a lot more tech than most people suppose. Many of the old decrepit farmhouses you see from the Interstate are chock full of computers and sophisticated equipment. And nowadays the cabs of farm machinery look like the space shuttle.

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