Blue River Technology Puts Robots to Work in Farmers' Fields

With the world population and food prices rising, a Sunnyvale, California startup has a great idea, combining robotics and agricultural practices. They are using computer technology to recognize and remove weeds from farmers? fields, saving both money and the environment.

While students at Stanford University, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden came up with the idea in a class and are now making it a reality through Blue River Technology, founded in 2011. According to the website, the necessary qualities are ?robotics, computer vision, machine learning and precision agriculture.?

There are many advantages to their computer automation of agriculture. Let robots eliminate the weeds, instead of spending $25 billion a year on herbicides. Purge the weeds without contaminating the crops or the environment or making people sick.

There are also applications for organic fields, which already avoid harmful chemicals. Instead, many people must pull the weeds, which is uncomfortable, grueling work.

Some plants have become resistant to herbicides, so they are sometimes ineffective, anyway.

To automate the farming work, Blue River Technology incorporates three procedures to identify and eliminate weeds. First, the machine determines if something in its path is a plant; if yes, is it a weed; and finally, if yes, remove it.

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Blue River Technology has already begun testing a prototype attached to a tractor on cooperating farmers? fields. Called the Lettuce-Bot, the prototype weeds and thins lettuce plants.

A camera trained to recognize lettuce analyzes plants growing in a lettuce field. In the next step, either a knife or a focused dose of herbicide can remove non-lettuce plants. Although herbicides are part of the testing, the company plans more environmentally responsible methods for the future.

Jorge Heraud, Blue River Technology CEO, told RESCUECOM, ?The technical feasibility of the Lettuce-Bot technology has been verified, and next steps will focus to strengthen the algorithms at the core of our computer vision system, as well as prepare the product for commercialization. The product will be available in early 2013.?

Blue River Technology recently received a $3.1 million investment from Khosla Ventures. ?The funds will be used primarily to grow the engineering team and accelerate product development,? Heraud noted. ?We?re looking for exceptional talent to join our efforts in pushing the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning.?

Let us hope that this technology gives the world a better chance of feeding its people and preserving its environment.

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Source: http://www.rescuecom.com/blog/index.php/technology/blue-river-technology-puts-robots-to-work-in-farmers-fields/

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