Sustainable Development

Farm Researchers Are Using Military Face-Recognition Software To Inspect Grapes

by The Daily Eye Team April 7 2017, 1:47 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 51 secs

Somewhere in a field in South Carolina, a robot drives slowly through the dry soil between tall, swaying rows of sorghum: a nutrient-rich grain. The robot scans the stalks of sorghum, photographs them, looking for disease. It uses laser scanning to estimate their height and volume. And, every now and then, it reaches out a robotic arm, grabs hold of one of the stalks, and stabs it with a probe to measure the thickness of the rind. Welcome to the farm of the future. This little robo-farmer is just one project developed by FarmView, a multidisciplinary, multi-institution effort to put advanced technology to use on the farm. With an exploding global population, we need to increase food production by 70 percent over the next 40 years if we hope to feed everybody, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization. While the impacts of climate change will increase crop yields in some areas, it will introduce new challenges that make it more difficult to grow healthy, abundant crops.

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