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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
TECHNOLOGY
Remote-Controlled Cultivation Robots are proving to be valuable farmhands By Adam Stone
A
T MID-SOUTH FAMILY FARMS
in Ripley, Tenn., owner Scott Fullen wants to know more about the health of his crops. “We can go out in the field and look, but I can’t walk every field, and we are making general assumptions based on just a limited area,” he said. “We get good information now, but I think that this could give us better information, quicker.” “This” is a TerraSentia robot, manufactured by EarthSense. Rigged with sensors, it zips between Fullen’s rows of cotton, corn and soybeans, measuring plant health and other key factors. “It’s got cameras to take pictures on the ground, even below the canopy, and then it has algorithms to analyze those pictures,” Fullen said. “It shows us where things are happening at a very detailed level.” Fullen is not alone. Farmers increasingly are turning to robots to generate information and help support routine tasks at a time when labor is in short supply. “The demand for food is increasing, while the number of qualified people to tend the crops is decreasing,” said Usha Haley, an expert on global agricultural issues GEORGIA TECH
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The Grow Out robot is being programmed to monitor the temperature of a henhouse and remove eggs from the ground.
