Apr 10 2009
Robot Trends | Robots Created to Care for Cherry Tomato Plants
Students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a group of robots developed for the purpose of taking care of cherry tomato plants; from watering and pollinating to harvesting, possibly signaling a new robot trend of the future. Anyone who has grown cherry tomatoes knows the immediate challenges students would face when attempting to make a robot to serve that specific plant.
Probably the most difficult mechanical task was creating the are needed to pick the fruit when it was ready. Cherry tomato plants will vine all over and take unpredicatable paths when they do, making the development of a mechanical arm difficult to handle all situations; from vines spreading out to vines reaching up to the sky.
The work group included 12 students, who were each assigned a specific task that robot would have to successfully perform.
Sensors in the soil communciate to the network which the robots are connected to when they’ll need fertilizer or water, and a camera allows the growing fruit to be monitored.
There is also a basic model of the growth cycle of cherry tomatoes to give the robot an idea when the fruit will be ready for picking.
This particular type of project will have to advance quite a bit to be a true robot trend, but it is interesting to see the potential out there, but the task is daunting when it comes to the unpredictable area of agriculture and living things.
