Farms are getting more interesting with the introduction of robots, for example Bosch has a field robot that literally punches weeds to death and Japan-based SPREAD is building a factory that will plant, grow and harvest lettuce (all indoors). The farming industry may have come from paleolithic origins (the planting and harvesting of sustenance) but modern farming is an industry, and it’s seeing a rise in the use of automation and robotics to get the job done. Farming robots are tireless workers capable of simple, repetitive tasks that allow farms to produce more product faster with less supervision.

In 2012, according to the United States Department of Agriculture census, the agricultural industry in the United States sold over $212 billion worth of crops (exceeding the sale of livestock the second time in the history of the census). Also according to the USDA, over 90 million acres of land are planted for corn; while vegetables (including potatoes) accounted for 14 percent of U.S. cash crop receipts, or an average of $17.4 billion. Crops in the U.S. represent a massive industrial sector with a lot of space for automation to take place.

Networks and automation are revolutionizing the business of farming, both in quality and efficiency. With this in mind, here are a few examples of the advances that automation has brought to the art and science of agriculture.

Taking the fields indoors

Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in a controlled, indoor environment. It’s called vertical farming because the fields of crops and produce are stacked in vertical layers, saving space. The advantage to this is the farmer can control every aspect of the operation, eliminating the worries of insects, pollution or bad weather. Also, it’s very efficient, demanding far less water while growing crops faster than traditional methods.

AeroFarms (Just Greens, LLC) is a major player in this branch of the farming industry. They use networks and automation to control watering, lighting, and nutrition in their vertical fields, resulting high-quality yields in roughly half the time of ordinary farming. As AeroFarm’s site states, they monitor more than 30,000 data points per harvest, using predictive analytics to shape the final product.

SPREAD expects to build a plant factory in Kizugawa, Kyoto (Kansai Science City) that would feature state-of-the-art artificial farming and robotic automation of lettuce to go online in Fall 2017. Photo: SPREAD

A Japanese company, SPREAD Co., Ltd., is using robotics in its vertical farms. The factory assigns robots to water, harvest, and re-plant the growing crops, raising more than 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. Spread expects to double this figure soon with the automated farm, and looks forward to hundreds of thousands of lettuce heads per day within five years.

Bringing robotics to the fields 

Robots aren’t just for use on vertical farms; they’re also appearing out in the fields under nature’s skies. Working the fields is among the more unpleasant and thankless of jobs, so it’s becoming hard for farmers to find the labor they need. Automation is taking up the slack.

Panasonic Corporation recently debuted a tomato-picking robot at the International Robot Exhibition 2015 convention. This is big news because selecting ripe produce and picking it without damage has been a major challenge for machines.

Breakthroughs in machine vision and touch sensors have changed all that. While the robot itself is still in development, Panasonic hopes to have it perform every step of the harvesting process.

The Bosch BoniRob adaptable multi-purpose robotic platform can be outfitted to “punch” weeds, leaving more room for food crops to grow. Photo: Bosch.

Bosch (Robert Bosch GmbH) stepped into the ring with BoniRob, a robot that punches weeds. This robot, about the size of a small car, can drive itself up and down crop rows, hunting for weeds by using machine vision to judge leaf shape, color, and size. If an unauthorized plant is found, the pneumatic ram comes out and smashes the intruder into the dirt.

The practical side of punching weeds comes in the form of reduced pesticide usage and precision crop monitoring. Bosch is marketing BoniRob as a multipurpose platform for agricultural applications.

Featured image credit: One on One via photopin (license) and oh dandelion, I can’t stay mad at you via photopin (license)