A robo-farmer named Prospero to replace human in the agriculture field

It was the automation of heavy duty and mundane tasks that resulted in industrial as well as information technology revolution. Man has been trying to invent machines that help him reduce the human factor and increase productivity manifolds. While machines have invaded each and every sphere of our existence, it remains a debatable topic whether or not we should become so heavily dependent on them. Meanwhile, David Dourhout from Iowa, who is an entomologist by profession and also a robot hobbyist, has come up with a six-legged fleet of robots, called Prospero that can plant seeds with precision and interact with each other while doing so.

A robot-farmer named Prospero

According to Dourhout, agriculture field has become extremely mechanized and it is humans who are the limiting factor in the chain. While the focus previously was on using chemicals to increase productivity, Prospero will help in doing the same without their aid, by getting more production from each tract by efficient plantation of crop.

Dourhout has kept his idea simple and uses swarm robotics, inspired by ants, and gaming theory to get the work done from his robots. Swarm robotics gets its inspiration from nature itself by studying the swarming behavior of ants, insects, fish and other animals. In order to determine the patches of land that have already been seeded, Prospero takes insight from the lives of ants, which emit pheromone at the site where they discover food. In a similar fashion, these robots spray a white paint over the site where they have seeded the ground. Other robots use the sensors to detect this paint and accordingly determine whether or not to seed the area.

The robots take care of various factors such as seed spacing and soil types. Based on its software and sensors, it makes its decision regarding the spacing of seeds for a particular patch of land, which in-turn depends on the soil-type. All of this would help in increasing the productivity by leaps and bounds. According to Dourhout, if the robots could up the productivity even by 20 percent, it would help US overcome the shortage of food it is currently facing. Steve Young, a weed ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, on the other hand, is working to develop a robot that would help in differentiating weeds from the crop. This would in eliminating the use of herbicides on the crop.

The robots come as a lucrative substitute for chemicals, which are now considered an unsustainable way of increasing productivity. Farmers from other parts of the world are already showing their interest in Prospero (in hope that it would bring them the much needed prosperity). Dourhout aspires to develop an autonomous intelligent robot that would integrate the different phases, i.e., planting, tending and harvesting. The robot will perform these tasks in different seasons and could alter the functioning based on the crop and the season. He will also build a large robot that would run a hybrid gas-electric generator and would charge the smaller robots. While Prospero just seems to be a part of Phase I, the overall system will bring a paradigm shift in the way we would do farming in the future.

Via: Discovery