Robohub.org
c-Environment-Agriculture
Could RoboBees help save food supplies? (video)
Robohub Editors
08 Aug 2016
Originally pioneered at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, in collaboration with Northeastern University, RoboBees are inspired by nature and designed for an important reason: wild pollinators -- such as...
Robots for a sustainable future
Jibo
15 Jul 2016
Climate change is one of the greatest issues facing the world today. With temperatures rising to their highest point in 4,000 years due to human activity and monthly average carbon dioxide levels exce...
ep.
208
podcast
Ladybird, with James Underwood
Podcast team
21 May 2016
Transcript below.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews James Underwood from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. Underwood discusses his work on an autonomous vegetable harvesting ...
Protecting European wine: Vinbot rover optimises harvest and quality
Horizon Magazine
13 May 2016
by Fintan Burke
With warmer winters and drier summers, climate change might even be having an effect on your favourite bottle of wine.
Winemakers are already witnessing changes. In...
Farming with robots
SPARC
04 May 2016
Farmers are increasingly under pressure to feed more people. The UN predicts that the world population will rise from 7.3 billion today to 9.7 billion in 2050. This growing population has become picki...
Where’s Susi? Airborne orangutan tracking with python and react.js
Dirk Gorissen
27 Apr 2016
You are faced with a few thousand hectares of rainforest that you know harbours one or more orangutans that you need to track down. Where, how, and why do you start looking?...
Showcasing New Zealand AgTech: Bringing automation and robotics to the farm
Andra Keay and Silicon Valley Robotics
27 Apr 2016
New Zealand’s government innovation agency Callaghan Innovations and Silicon Valley’s innovation non-profit SVForum organized Transforming AgTech, an event bringing together New Zealand and US a...
10 strategies for bringing agricultural expertise to robotics startups
Andra Keay and Silicon Valley Robotics
26 Apr 2016
No agricultural robotics startup will be successful without a strong connection to the farm. And here are 10 strategies for creating that connection I’ve seen succeed. Thanks to the great panel a...
Interview: The team behind the apple harvesting robot
Clearpath Robotics
08 Mar 2016
By: Chris Bogdon
Amir Degani is an assistant professor at Technion Institute of Technology and Avi Kahnani is the CEO and Co-Founder of Israeli robotics start-up Fresh Fruits Robotics. Together, they...
Using drones in wine making
Waypoint
28 Dec 2015
In 2014, viticulturist William Metz was granted a fellowship by the Villa d’Este Wine Symposium to spend a full year evaluating the potential applications of drones in wine making — a project t...
Yamaha RMAX crop sprayer gets full FAA approval
Frank Tobe
21 Dec 2015
The FAA granted Yamaha Motor Corporation an Agricultural Aircraft Operations certificate for their RMAX crop spraying remotely piloted helicopters....
Blue River Technology, Jibo and others get holiday funding
Frank Tobe
18 Dec 2015
Jibo got $16 million from Asian VCs to enable Jibo to speak and sell in Japan and China, while Blue River Technology got $17 million from a group of agricultural VCs to expand product development to n...
Blueberry picking robot could win $250,000 prize
Silicon Valley Robotics
29 Oct 2015
Here’s an interesting robotics challenge – a coalition of blueberry farmers are offering a $250,000 prize for automation solutions that improve blueberry picking. The deadline for entries in the c...
Autonomous underwater system for monitoring health of Venice Lagoon demos at #EXPO2015
Thomas Schmickl
15 Oct 2015
Monitoring the ocean for pollution, ecology and climate change effects is a costly and elaborate task, especially in a complex area like Venice, with its lagoon, its many channels, cable and pipe...
ep.
186
podcast
Towards Automating Fieldwork, with Hans-Peter Grothaus
Per Sjöborg
10 Jul 2015
Transcript included.
In this episode, Per Sjöborg talks to Hans-Peter Grothaus, from CLAAS, about automation in agriculture....
As Google cars roll out, Deere reminds us of its thousands of self-driving tractors
Frank Tobe
28 Jun 2015
Google is putting 25 new self-driving cars onto the streets of Mountain View, California, but agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere reminds us that it already has tens of thousands of self-dr...
Field and service robotics: Live tweets and pics from #FSRToronto
Robohub Editors
24 Jun 2015
FSR, the biannual single track meeting on field and service robotics, is on now in Toronto. With 42 papers on a range of applications and keynotes by Chris Urmson (Google[x]), Paul Newman (Oxford...
AgBot Robotic Seeding Challenge powered by $50K grant for Grizzly RUV
Clearpath Robotics
14 May 2015
By Rachel Gould
The 2016 agBOT Robotic Seeding Challenge challenges participants to build unmanned robotic equipment to plant, measure and track multiple crop seeds to improve farming efficiency...
Drought and desertification: How robots might help
John Payne
17 Apr 2015
Groundwater levels in California's Central Valley are down to historic lows and reservoirs have been depleted following four consecutive years of severe drought in the state. California is set to i...
Media is more excited about farm robots than exhibitors at World Ag Expo
Frank Tobe
17 Feb 2015
The 48th annual World Ag Expo, with over 1,400 exhibitors, finished up in Tulare, California last week with little exposure to robotic game changers. Their Top 10 New Products included just one robot...
2 agricultural robotics projects funded under latest Horizon 2020
John Payne
27 Jan 2015
On January 13 the EU announced its list of robotics projects funded under Horizon 2020, the EU funding program for research and innovation. Agriculture is one of four “priority domains” for robot...
Agricultural technology making news
Frank Tobe
02 Dec 2014
My article Are agricultural robots ready? was widely read last month. Now there are two new in-depth articles on the subject by the NY Times and San Jose Mercury News. All are informative and worth y...
Are agricultural robots ready? 27 companies profiled
Frank Tobe
12 Nov 2014
Agriculture is one of our most important industries. It provides food, feed and fuel necessary for our survival. With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, agricultural production...
PrecisionHawk raises $10M
Hallie Siegel
18 Sep 2014
According to a press release from today:
PrecisionHawk, an information delivery company that uses a small, lightweight UAV and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyze aerial data, today...
Drones against illegal fishing
Dronologista
24 Jul 2014
Image source: Flickr
With industry losses worth US$23 billion per year, illegal fishing represents a major global problem. One out of three bluefin tunas are caught illegally, as are around 20% of a...
Harvesting Robots for High-value Crops | Journal of Field Robotics
John Payne
14 Jul 2014
“This review article analyzes state-of-the-art and future perspectives for harvesting robots in high-value crops. The objectives were to characterize the crop environment relevant for robotic harves...
University students developing robotic gardening technology | NASA
John Payne
12 Jul 2014
As astronauts explore beyond Earth, they will need to make their habitat as self-sustaining as possible. This includes growing fruits and vegetables.Source: www.nasa.gov...
Will agricultural robots arrive in time to keep fruit and vegetable costs down?
Frank Tobe
11 Jul 2014
Grape pickers migrate from field to field in northern Mexico and California. Photo credit: Tomas Castelazo (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons.
77% of all agricultural workers in the US are foreign bor...
Migration from Mexico to U.S. is tapering off. How does this impact farmers?
Frank Tobe
26 Jun 2014
A recent newsletter from Harvest Automation, the start-up company that produces robots that move potted plants at nurseries and greenhouses, cites two very revealing trends regarding migrant workers....
ROS meets precision agriculture at Blue River Technology
Open Source Robotics Foundation
05 Jun 2014
If you were to design the worst possible environment for software engineering, the cramped jump seat of a John Deere tractor would be a contender. The sound and vibration of the engine makes conversat...
Canadian farmers invest in robots to work ‘smarter, not harder’ | CBC
Hallie Siegel
13 May 2014
Thousands of farms around the world now use robotic technology. In Canada, the automatic milkers are more recent – and the numbers of early adopters can be counted in the dozens.
Read more by David...
ep.
155
podcast
Zero Tillage Robotics, with Peter Corke
Ron Vanderkley
02 May 2014
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Professor Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology, about the fast-tracking research that will see robots planting, weeding, maintaining and har...
Urban vegetable garden system with LED lighting
DigInfo TV
10 Mar 2014
Keystone Technology's LED vegetable garden system is a cultivation system for indoor plant factories that uses LED lighting instead of sunlight. The most defining feature of the system on display at t...
Lockheed and AeroVironment to jointly develop UAS
Frank Tobe
16 Feb 2014
AeroVironment (of Raven, Puma and Wasp fame) has a high-altitude long-endurance UAV named Global Observer. It flies at 65,000’ for a week or more at a time, has up to a 600-mile diameter fo...
Agricultural robot market anticipated to reach $16.3 billion by 2020
Frank Tobe
01 Feb 2014
In a new $7,800 report by Wintergreen Research, significant growth is anticipated over the remainder of this decade in every aspect of farming, milking, food production and animal control....
International Robot Olympiad 2013 wraps up
John Payne
23 Dec 2013
Materials used to produce International Robot Olympiad competition events.
The 2013 (15th annual) International Robot Olympiad competition has come to a close. Next year it will take place in Beiji...
