Robots are tending to tomato plants at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). Nikolaus Correll, an MIT postdoc, has made a robot fitted with a watering pump and programmed to tend to tomato plants grown in the MIT’s CSAIL.
In the video above, the robots appear to be built on a modified Roomba with a long arm and water pump attached to a small water tank. When the plants signal for more water or nutrients, the robot receives their message and rolls over to service them.
Agriculture needs swarm computing. The effectiveness of this type of swarm computing could be staggering. Imagine large orange groves being maintained autonomously by these types of swarm robots. Reduced manpower, accidents, lower cost of production, and higher output would revolutionize agriculture.