A four-legged robot is among the developments being worked on for growers by a team of engineers and crop scientists at Warwick University.
Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) is collaborating with horticultural crop specialists at Warwick Crop Centre, Wellesbourne (now known as the Innovation Campus, Stratford upon Avon). Alongside finding ways to use ‘Spot’, an autonomous four-legged robot supplied by technology company Boston Dynamics, the team has created its own wheeled crop monitoring robot, Crombot.
Crombot is an autonomous machine with a camera mounted on a robot arm, designed to continuously and repetitively monitor crops for pests, diseases and other stresses, or fruit ripeness. It has proven capable of safely navigating around a greenhouse but also able to follow an individual on command.
Spot is already commercially available, with more than 1,000 in use by various industries. The Warwick team is focusing on the machine’s ability to pick its way around and over obstacles – such as greenhouse heating pipes – or in muddy fields outdoors.
WMG principal engineer Alex Keller said: “The Spot robot could be ideal for agricultural monitoring, but is currently very expensive. Further research is needed to understand if it could progress to challenges such as harvesting and more.
“This is why we are continuing to develop our in-house robotic capabilities, so we can help industry to create robotic solutions that are affordable and realistic for growers.”
He added: “Currently, we can detect and count tomatoes, for example. Adding additional AI capabilities such as determining whether fruit is ready for picking is relatively easy to implement, as long as readiness can be distinguished by a strong visual feature, such as the colour.”
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