Let me admit up front that I'm not the best person to be covering a robotics competition. In fact this is only the second one I've attended; the first, Sparkfun's AVC, is a tough act to follow and set...
Link to audio file (27:16)
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with David Dorhout from Iowa State University about his Agricultural Robots that include Prospero the robot farmer and Aquarius the g...
Did you know that the world’s population is set to increase from seven billion people to more than nine billion in the next 40 years? In order to meet this growing demand, agricultural producers wil...
The popular conception of farming as low-tech is woefully out of date. Modern farmers are high-tech operators: They use GIS software to plan their fields, GPS to guide field operations, and auto-steer...
University of Colorado's robotic plant growth is demonstrated at the Kennedy Space Center. Source: NASA.
Targeting a sustainable presence of humans in outer space will require solving air, water, ...
Link to audio file (31:48)
In this episode Sabine Hauert speaks with Jorge Heraud, CEO of California-based startup Blue River Technology which brings together computer vision and robotics to auto...
Photo credit: Patrick Egan.
There are bushels of folks out there now spending money and putting time in finding niches for unmanned systems that already exist. You may be saying, isn’t that what we...
Yamaha is testing spraying vineyards in Napa Valley through a COA with the FAA. Photo courtesy Yamaha Corp.
With the global market for unmanned systems in agriculture on the rise, companies that ma...
No, this is not about shapeshifting robots, come to save or destroy Earth. It is about transforming the contexts within which robotic technologies are applied, and about practicing robotics with the i...
‘Drones in agriculture’ has been a topic hot lately, but is it a real business?
As a former Army UAV platoon leader and a current founder of an aerial data collection start-up, I believe so, bu...
Two robots follow boundary markers on either side of an irrigation pipe. Photo credit: Harvest Automation.
In mid-2012, four HV-100 robots from Harvest Automation achieved an elusive milestone in rob...
3D Robotics's Vice President of Sales and Marketing John Cherbini prepares to launch a plane at Small Vines Wines in Sebastopol, Ca Sept. 13, 2013. The plane can help day-to-day operations on a farm...
Link to audio file (38:51)
FutureDairy is an R&D development program to help Australian dairy farmers manage the challenges they are likely to face during the next 20 years. In this episode, Ron ...
With an ever-increasing need to feed the world's hungry, the agricultural sector has long been an important boon to the field of robotics: the sector's widespread acceptance and use of automation tec...
Insitu's Scan Eagle x200.
Two small drones, Insitu's Scan Eagle X200 and AeroVironment's PUMA, have become the first federally certified unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for civilian use in the US. O...
... In an Associated Press article by Gosia Wozniacka, using robots to sort, thin, harvest and handle fruits and vegetables were examined.
... Blue River Technology and their Lettuce Bot; Vision Ro...
Over the last few years, there has been increasing talk about the potential of agriculture as a market for robotics. Speaking about future markets for unmanned aerial systems in a recent presentation ...