MIT and the Constant Robotic Gardeners

Singularity Hub writes "MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is pioneering the field of automated farming. During a semester-long experiment, CSAIL's researchers created a laboratory farm: tomato plants in terra cotta pots with artificial turf for grass. The goal of the experiment: to see if these tomatoes could be grown, tended, and harvested by robot caretakers."

Comments

Robots vs. seasonal farm laborers . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This might work in the lab, but when robots are working alongside seasonal farm laborers, those poor robots are going to break down real fast, get run over by heavy farm machinery, and just plain disappear under mysterious circumstances.

The best way to do this..

[Anonymous Coward]

is by placing giant scissor blades on the robots, and using a liberal recognition algorithm for when tomatoes are big enough to be cut from the stem

please

Re:Growing "tomatoes"

[Profane MuthaFucka]

My tomatoes don't last two weeks before the squirrels get them. That's OK, because squirrels are also delicious if you trap them yourself.