“The fruits and vegetables you eat may soon be cultivated and processed by an army of drones and robots, some powered by artificial intelligence. In fact, it’s already happening on farms across America,” reports CBS News:
Hylio, a Houston-based tech company, was granted an exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration in February for a single pilot to operate swarms of heavy drones over farms. Three battery-powered drones, some weighing as much as 400 pounds each, can now be used at one time to spray fertilizer and pesticides on fields of produce. That task is typically handled by farm workers or crop-dusting planes.
Before the FAA decision, deploying this kind of drone swarm would have required a team of licensed operators, which makes the process more complicated and expensive. Using a swarm of three drones at one time, one operator can spray 150 acres every hour.
“The exemption we got is precedent setting,” said Hylio CEO Arthur Erickson. “[Our] customers and other companies can now cite it and receive the same permissions.”
Crop-dusting drones were among the many high-tech agricultural tools on display at the February 2024 World Agriculture Expo in Tulare, in the heart of California’s Central Valley.
More than 1,250 exhibitors appeared at this year’s Expo, which drew more than 100,000 visitors. They observed demonstrations of products including an autonomous crop sprayer and an AI-powered robot that gently picked berries with a silicone “hand.”…Paul Mikesell, CEO and founder of Carbon Robotics, showed off his company’s Laser Weeder, which uses powerful infrared lasers and high-speed cameras to identify and blast weeds to oblivion in a matter of seconds….
Developers of these high-tech tools said their inventions could help ease the decadeslong labor shortage that’s been impacting the U.S. agricultural industry. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of hired farm laborers declined by more than 50%, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hiring has continued to be a challenge for farm owners into the 2020s.
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.
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.
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.
