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Laser Weeder, Laser Mower
Imagine sitting in a deckchair in your garden blasting the daylights out of
weeds with a laser, or cutting the lawn to millimetre precision using a laser
mower. These sound more like Dan Dare than Alan Titchmarsh, but lasers are not
only feasible, they are ecological. A Danish team has turned a carbon dioxide
laser on to weeds and mown them down with surgical precision. Read the
rest
Future Farm Technology WHAT'S SIX FEET, six inches tall, weighs 370 lbs., walks 3 mph, eats 350 watts, lifts 1,800 lbs., works 24 hours a day, never gets tired and never asks for a pay raise? Answer: A functionoid. You may not have heard of that name before, since the list of electronic "gee-whiz" words keeps growing faster than our ability to keep up.
A functionoid is just one of many new electro-mechanical devices that may some
day soon turn farm machines like tractors, sprayers and cultivators into museum
pieces. Read the
rest
Robot Harvestors Like Oranges Too Some day, in the not-too-distant future, those oranges you eat may be untouched by human hands. Robotic orange pickers, now being tested at several locations around the world, can already analyze fruit for ripeness by color, determine it's location ont the tree and zoom in for the picking. Read the rest
Ag Trackers NasaExplores
When you see acres of corn growing in straight, well-watered rows, it hardly
seems like a space-age accomplishment. Researchers, however, are finding ways
that robots can help farmers. Once the farmers show that the robots are
successful and reliable, the robots could be drafted for use in space, as well
on Earth.
One particular robot, called the Ag Tracker, was developed to move up and down rows of corn, applying fertilizer, sampling the soil, and examining the plants for disease. Infrared sensors measure distances from the robot to the plant stalks, and keep the robot equal distances from both sides of the plant. It's similar to the way people steer bicycles and automobiles. They try to stay between guidelines and avoid curbs. At the end of the corn rows, the robot detects the absence of corn stalks. It slows and stops, and then makes a 90-degree turn. The robot then travels until it senses another corn stalk, turns another 90 degrees, and proceeds up the next row of corn. It's a simple design, but like all robotic ventures, is a complicated process to bring about.
The Ag Trackers nicknamed - Ag Ants - are inexpensive to build, costing only
about
$100. The robot design uses sensors but not a full computer, which is one way
to reduce costs. Another cost cutter is the Ag Ant's size: it can be a third
of a meter (1 foot) long, and the smaller something is, the less material it
requires. Read the
rest
Robots To Slash Farm Labour Costs http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/ Robots are on the march again into the last bastion of labour intensive industry - farming and horticulture. Warwick researchers are working on a suite of robots and automated systems which could transform farming and horticulture over the next decade.
The researchers from the University of Warwick's horticultural arm, Warwick
HRI, and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group,
are working on a number of robotics and automation products that will vastly
reduce the labour costs of farmers and growers. Those projects include: Read
the
rest
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