Using artificial intelligence, agricultural robots are on the rise
Down on the farm with Tom, Dick and Harry
SLOWLY BUT surely, a spidery machine about the size of a golf cart swings an electrode over a tray of plants. Every few seconds there is a small puff of smoke as a weed keels over, having been zapped with a high voltage. The device doing the zapping is a prototype weeding robot developed by the Small Robot Company, a new firm operating out of an old munitions depot near Salisbury, in south-west Britain.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Farming with Tom, Dick and Harry”
From the February 8th 2020 edition
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