“Theo works weekdays, weekends and nights and never complains about a sore spine despite performing hour upon hour of what, for a regular farm hand, would be backbreaking labor checking Dutch tulip fields for sick flowers,” reports the Associated Press.
Theo is a robot with artificial intelligence. Theo works on a windy farm on the Dutch North Sea coast. This intelligent robot detects disease in the first flowers to grow sick, before the sickness can spread through an entire field of tulips:
On a windy spring morning, the robot trundled Tuesday along rows of yellow and red ‘goudstuk’ tulips, checking each plant and, when necessary, killing diseased bulbs to prevent the spread of the tulip-breaking virus. The dead bulbs are removed from healthy ones in a sorting warehouse after they have been harvested.
The virus stunts growth and development of plants leading to smaller and weaker flowers. It also weakens the bulb itself, eventually leaving them unable to flower.
As part of efforts to tackle the virus, there are 45 robots patrolling tulip fields across the Netherlands…In the past, this was work carried out by human “sickness spotters,” said Allan Visser, a third-generation tulip farmer who is using the robot for the second growing season….the robot costs 185,000 euros ($200,000). “But I prefer to have the robot…Yeah, it is expensive, but there are less and less people who can really see the sick tulips,” he added…“It has cameras in the front, and it makes thousands of pictures of the tulips. Then it will, determine if the tulip is sick or not by its AI model…
Erik de Jong of H2L Robotics, the company that makes the robots, says artificial intelligence helps them identify sick flowers and very precise GPS coordinates allows them to pinpoint the flowers that need to be destroyed.
Researchers have also developed robots to pick cotton. That may eliminate the need for cotton farmers to buy mechanical harvesters that cost $1 million and weigh 30 tons, compressing soil and thus sometimes harming soil health.
Robots with artificial intelligence are spreading on Japanese farms. In the U.S., farming robots now use artificial intelligence to kill 100,000 weeds per hour. Drones with artificial intelligence will make farming easier.
Robots are also being use for food preparation, such as the salad-making robot used by the Sweetgreen restaurant chain. Robot waiters are increasingly being used in South Korean restaurants, which are facing a labor shortage.
Chipotle is investing in a “digital makeline” where robots prepare salads and bowls. It already uses a machine named Chippy to make tortilla chips and a contraption called the Autocado to mash avocados into guacamole. Sweetgreen has a robotic chop-and-prep system that “can produce up to 100 salads in 15 minutes, with improved accuracy,” according to Restaurant Business. Chipotle’s founder, Steve Ells, is opening a chain of robot-run vegetarian fast-casual restaurants in New York City called Kernel, according to Eater.
Last year, doctors used a surgical robot to carry out incredibly complicated spinal surgery. They also did the first robotic liver transplant in America.
Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells to repair damaged cells. Nanorobots are also being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply,” reported Next Big Future.
Artificial intelligence is now developing highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. Doctors overseas are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively.
