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Robots Podcast: Harvest automation with Joe Jones


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14 January 2011



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In today’s episode we look at a new market in robotics with huge potential, agriculture. With us, Joe Jones, co-founder of Harvest Automation and father of the Roomba.

In addition, you might have noted that we’re starting the new year with an upgrade to our website. Our partner, robots.net, will now provide us with news. You can access each episode’s news items, along with many others, via the website’s new NEWS tab, which replaces the former Forum. We think that this will increase both the quality and accessibility of our news content, and look forward to your comments in the improved comments section under each post.

Joseph Jones

Joe Jones is a robotics visionary with 24 years in the field. As proof, he was the first employee of iRobot, where he invented the Roomba that has sold over 3 million units. He also spent 9 years in robotic research at the MIT AI Lab, authored three books on robotics, and holds 15 patents. Today we have him on our show to talk about Harvest Automation, company that he co-founded with a team of robotics experts and ex-iRobot employees. Tapping into the huge agriculture market, Harvest will start by deploying thousands of robots to nurse potted plants. To give you an idea, here’s a short video.

The nice thing with agriculture robots is that incremental improvements to the robot can open a huge range of new applications. With that in mind, Harvest hopes to eventually deploy robots in real fields, doing all the large-scale dirty work challenging today’s farmers.

Finally, Jones also gives us a glimpse at the market and some of his secrets to bridge the gap between academia and business.

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Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.
Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.





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