IL - In a research field off Highway 54 last
autumn, corn stalks shimmered in rows 40-feet deep. Girish Chowdhary, an
agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, bent to place a small white robot at the edge of a row
marked 103.
The robot, named TerraSentia, resembled a souped up version
of a lawn mower, with all-terrain wheels and a high-resolution camera
on each side.
In much the same way
that self-driving cars “see” their surroundings, TerraSentia navigates a
field by sending out thousands of laser pulses to scan its environment.
A few clicks on a tablet were all that were needed to orient the robot
at the start of the row before it took off, squeaking slightly as it
drove over ruts in the field. more
Farm Bots from 48 years ago,
in your weekend movie,
