{"id":345,"date":"2020-10-14T12:21:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T12:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1323309"},"modified":"2020-10-14T12:21:40","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T12:21:40","slug":"alphabet-x-has-built-a-plant-buggy-a-cute-ai-farmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet X has built a \u2018plant buggy\u2019 \u2014 a cute AI farmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Alphabet\u2018s X lab has unveiled its latest moonshot project: a crop-inspecting robot named the \u201cplant buggy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The solar-powered prototype roams autonomously through fields, using GPS software to identify the location of plants. When it finds them, it uses&nbsp;cameras and machine perception tools&nbsp;to study their traits and any issues in the field.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;cart combines data collected from the field, such as plant height and fruit size, with environmental factors including weather forecasts and soil information. This is all analyzed by machine learning to evaluate how the crops are growing and interacting with their surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>The buggy comes in a variety of shapes and sizes so it can adapt to different fields.&nbsp;Alphabet <a href=\"https:\/\/x.company\/projects\/mineral\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">says<\/a>&nbsp;it can help farmers treat individual plants and predict how different crops will respond to their environments. They could use these insights to forecast the size and yield of a harvest or spot diseases before they ruin a whole crop.<\/p>\n<p><em>[<a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/neural\/2020\/10\/14\/ibm-announces-call-for-code-2020-grand-prize-winner\/\">IBM announces Call for Code 2020 grand prize winner<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The buggy has been tested in st<span>rawberry fields in California and soybean fields in Illinois.&nbsp;<\/span><span>I<\/span><span>t\u2019s already analyzed the life cycles of a range of crops, including melons, berries, lettuce, oilseeds, oats, and barley.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-image post-mediaBleed aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1323349 lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34.png\" alt width=\"1368\" height=\"930\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1368px) 100vw, 1368px\" data-lazy=\"true\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34.png 1368w, https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34-280x190.png 280w, https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34-397x270.png 397w, https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34-199x135.png 199w, https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2020\/10\/Screenshot-2020-10-14-at-12.18.34-796x541.png 796w\"><figcaption><a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/neural\/2020\/10\/14\/alphabet-x-has-built-a-plant-buggy-a-cute-lil-ai-farmer\/#\" data-url=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthenextweb.com%2Fneural%2F2020%2F10%2F14%2Falphabet-x-has-built-a-plant-buggy-a-cute-lil-ai-farmer%2F&amp;via=thenextweb&amp;related=thenextweb&amp;text=Check out this picture on: Alphabet says the system has evolved during testing in the field.\" data-title=\"Share Alphabet says the system has evolved during testing in the field. on Twitter\" data-width=\"685\" data-height=\"500\" class=\"post-image-share popitup\" title=\"Share Alphabet says the system has evolved during testing in the field. on Twitter\"><i class=\"icon icon--inline icon--twitter--dark\"><\/i><\/a>Alphabet says the system has evolved during testing in the field.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The device is part of an X project called Mineral, which was&nbsp;formed to develop \u201ccomputational agriculture\u201d that analyzes information about the plant world to help make&nbsp;farming more&nbsp;sustainable.<\/p>\n<p>With&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/bespoke\/follow-the-food\/the-ageing-crisis-threatening-farming\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">farming workforces rapidly aging<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/climate-change-is-affecting-crop-yields-and-reducing-global-food-supplies-118897\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">climate change affecting crop yields<\/a> in ways that can be hard to anticipate, such AI initiatives could play a key role in securing future food supplies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-post-pubDate\"> Published October 14, 2020 \u2014 12:21 UTC <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/neural\/2020\/10\/14\/alphabet-x-has-built-a-plant-buggy-a-cute-lil-ai-farmer\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alphabet\u2018s X lab has unveiled its latest moonshot project: a crop-inspecting robot named the \u201cplant buggy.\u201d The solar-powered prototype roams autonomously through fields, using GPS software to identify the location of plants&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}