Robots Taking Over the Garden

Reported October

HOPE, R.I. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Too much sun, too little water -- all parts of the equation that could keep plants from thriving. But now scientists have created robots to help man the fields.

Huey and Duey are robotic gardeners with a guaranteed green thumb. Computer scientists embedded sensors in the tomato plant. It talks wirelessly with the robots, telling Huey and Duey its location.

"The robots can drive and they have an arm so they can manipulate the plant," Nikolaus Corell, a computer scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, told Ivanhoe.

The plant's humidity sensor alerts the robotic gardeners when it's dry. Armed with a water bottle, Duey is ready for duty. A camera mounted on the robot's arm gives visual cues, as to the tomato's color, texture and shape.

"It tells the plant you have so many red tomatoes, you have so many green tomatoes," Corell explained.

Based on that information, Huey gets ready to pluck a tomato.

For some one like Michael Caprio, whose job it is to water all the plants, Huey and Duey could come in handy.

"On a hot day when the suns out, it could take four or five hours," Michael Caprio, Confreda Greenhouse and Farms in Hope, RI, explained. "You might even have to do it twice a day."

Each robot team is programmed to be identical, but decide amongst themselves which robot will respond to which task. Future applications for the robots could even include helping older adults in residential care facilities with basic tasks such as retrieving something from a drawer or shelf.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-USA, contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Nikolaus Correll, PhD
Department of Computer Science
Address
Boulder, CO
(303) 492-2233
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ncorrell

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
IEEE
Pender McCarter
IEEE http://www.ieee.org
IEEE-USA http://www.ieeeusa.org
p.mccarter@ieee.org

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