A project known as RoboCrop has used an autonomous robot dog to reduce costs, improve crop yields, and cut down on the use of pesticides and other chemicals commonly used in agriculture.
The RoboCrop system is based on Spot, one of Boston Dynamics’ most famous agile robots.
The quadrupedal robot was one of the company’s first designs to be made commercially available and has been used in a number of settings.
The project, based at MTC Liverpool, won funding from Innovate UK in March 2021 to demonstrate how automated systems could reduce the use of chemicals.
Studies have shown that more than 95% of sprayed herbicides and insecticides do not hit their target species due to being widely deployed across whole fields or areas.
The MTC team set about creating a payload for Spot that would enable the robot to carry out agricultural inspections, allowing for far more targeted use of these chemicals.
The robotics and automation team attached the payload, which contained an on-board computer and high-definition camera system that was able to manage Spot’s day-to-day patrols and activities autonomously.
AI system spots diseases and pests on the crops
Crucially, it also contained an AI-powered image processing system for crop inspection, allowing the RoboCrop Spot to look for pests or diseases.
This would then allow the targeted application of chemicals to only affected areas.
The team also designed and developed a user interface, allowing human workers at the Bardsley England orchard, where the RoboCrop system was deployed, to observe the data collected in real time.
This made the process of handling a fleet of robot dogs quicker and easier.
Following the test period of the RoboCrop project, MTC said that it has successfully demonstrated that complex autonomous mobile robots, AI and vision systems can have a positive impact on the British agricultural industry.
It listed a number of benefits, including:
- Ways to plan for and estimate a specific crop yield to provide a competitive market edge.
- Better targeted use of pesticides and herbicides. This lowered the number of pollutants released into the environment, which also improved soil quality.
- Lowered costs through the reduced labour and chemical requirements.
- Reduced CO2 production by reducing the need for petrol and diesel-powered vehicles and machinery.
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