Posted on 03/10/2009 4:21:01 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(PhysOrg.com) -- In the middle of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) sits a platform of fake grass with tomato plants nestled in terra cotta pots, growing under the light of an artificial sun. But this urban, indoor garden has a twist: the caretakers of the plants are entirely robotic.
The idea for tending to a garden without human hands came from work done by Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant working in MIT Professor Daniela Rus’ Distributed Robotics Lab. Correll saw the possible applications of swarm robotics to an agricultural environment and thus the idea grew into a course in which students created robots capable of tending a small garden of tomatoes.
Each robot is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking and computation. This affords them the ability to communicate: plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.
A tool called LCM, or Lightweight Communications Marshaller, was used to allow the different robotic modules to communicate; the version used in the project came from the DARPA Grand Challenge Vehicle. The object recognition software is built on the back of LabelMe, an image annotation tool pioneered by Bryan Russell and Professors Antonio Torralba and Bill Freeman. And the robotic bases themselves? Re-imagined versions of iRobot’s Roomba.
The system, which Rus refers to as precision agriculture, has a double advantage over the way crops are currently cultivated and harvested. First, due to each plant’s ability to monitor and broadcast its own physical state, water, nutrients and care will be dispensed on an as-needed basis. This should allow for a great reduction in resources consumed in the growth process, ameliorating the heavy carbon footprint of today’s agriculture. Furthermore, a mechanical harvest removes the backbreaking work currently involved in reaping specialty crops such as fruits and vegetables.
In the long view, the researchers hope to develop a fully autonomous greenhouse, complete with robots, pots, and plants connected via computation, sensing and communication.
Correll is optimistic about future applications of the project and others like it. Looking past agriculture, he ruminated on other tasks to which this sort of system can be applied down the line. Tasks, for example, like automating services for older adults with low mobility in residential care facilities, or tending to plants in greenhouses or hydroponic farms. The technology, once perfected, is immensely adaptable, and hints at an exciting future of collaboration between humans, the natural world, and our machines, he said.
"Robotic gardening: MIT course creates robot-tending tomatoes"
Sounds like the TOMATOES are tending the ROBOTS. Duh. Like that would ever happen.
Or would it...? *Cue 'Twilight Zone' Theme* ;)
In the middle of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) sits a platform of fake grass with tomato plants nestled in terra cotta pots, growing under the light of an artificial sun. But this urban, indoor garden has a twist: the caretakers of the plants are entirely robotic.
Video at link. Pretty cool!
Move over Hector, here comes HAL. Not a moment too soon either, HAL isn’t capable of self replicating 19 anchor computers.
Those plants are smarter than my ex-brother-in-law. MUCH smarter.
The writing for this story was horrible.
/johnny
we don’t need no stinkin illegals.
I wouldn’t want that robot picking my tomatoes, he almost fell on his head.
Gardening Ping
Just doing the jobs that Mexicans won’t do.
Yeah thats what I was thinking but I can’t remember the name of the movie......
http://www.moviesounds.com/2001/alright.wav (HAL9000 Speaks!)
“The writing for this story was horrible.”
I know! You’d think MIT geeks could communicate much better than THAT!
(I married one, LOL!)
Reminds me of a dream I once had...
I dreamed I visited an indoor orchard from the future. Each tree was planted in it’s own giant pot. The pots were arranged on shelves and were picked up and placed on conveyor belts when it was time to harvest the fruit. Then the tree and pot were put back into their assigned shelf once the fruit was harvested. The pots weren’t actually pots. They were pressure vessels sealed around the trunk of the tree with rubber gaskets. The inside of the pot was pressurized liquid(hydroponics, sort of). This was to speed up the nutrient and water uptake by the roots. THere were connections for hoses on the pots to add nutrients and to maintain the pressure.
Each plant was actually a frankenstein combination of 3 different plants. One genetically engineered for a superior root system, one genetically engineered for fruit production, and one genetically engineered for leaf production and photosynthesis.
Once each leaf was fully grown it was coated by a light emitting film, and sensors embedded to monitor photosynthesis and moisture loss. The data was used to calculate the pressure and nutrient concentrations of the pressure vessel.
All done automatically.
“Silent Running”, with Bruce Dern. An early example of “humans are killing the planet” agitprop sci-fi (but the odd little robots were entertaining). IIRC, the agro-ships were recycled (get it?) by Glen Larson in the original Battlestar Galactica series.
Yep that’s it! Thanks!
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