Alphabet's Mineral plans to help farmers with robotic plant buggies

California based Alphabet's X lab announced that its computational agriculture project - Mineral is developing new technologies to help build a more sustainable, resilient, and productive food system. It's team has spent the last few years developing and testing a range of software and hardware prototypes based on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, simulation, sensors, and robotics.

The outcome of the research is a robotic plant buggy. Powered by solar panels, the machine makes its way across a farmer's field, examining every plant it passes along the way with an array of cameras and sensors. In conjunction with satellite, weather and soil data, the buggy and its AI software can identify patterns and give farmers insights into their crops. This helps farmers troubleshoot individual plants. If only a handful need a pesticide or some other form of care, growers can save money and lessen their impact on the environment.

Growers face hundreds of decisions every season, and the current tools are not equipped enough to meet the challenges they face. Even though they use digital tools like sensors, spreadsheets and GPS, their data is either siloed or does not fully represent agriculture’s complexity.

Mineral Team, in their website said, "To feed the planet's growing population, global agriculture will need to produce more food in the next 50 years than in the previous 10,000 years — at a time when climate change is making our crops less productive".

The Mineral team has said that it may take a few years for the buggy to be released in the market. However, the team says it is working with innovative plant growers in the US, Canada, Argentina and South Africa. It is also in the process of finding more companies, organizations and governments to work with on its mission.

"Together, we will embrace nature's complexity and diversity to build a more sustainable, resilient and productive food system," the team said.

For more information, refer https://x.company/projects/mineral/

Source - MSN News, Alphabet X website