Artificial intelligence helping the farms: Google's farmer robot
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Posted on November 9, 2020
Can you imagine a plantation where each plant was monitored? And where each one received exactly the nutrients it needs by measuring each of its reactions?
From the bowels of the still quite unknown Google Laboratory X — that branch of the company always surrounded by a halo of secrecy — comes the robotagricultor!
Actually, this project, called Mineral, is much more than that: it is putting artificial intelligence at the service of agriculture. An arduous engineering job, in which one of the protagonists is a four-wheeled farmer robot, powered by solar panels, which is capable of traversing the crops, analysing the status and needs of each of the plantations.
Because, in a way, Google's Mineral project aims to achieve a quasi-individual cultivation system, in which each plant receives exactly what it needs.
It has toured the strawberry fields of California and the soy fields of Illinois analysing the whole process, from cultivation to harvest. Its goal: to build a more sustainable, resilient and productive food system.
