MIT Students Develop Robots With Green Thumbs

Just in time for Mother’s Day...in a couple of years. Students at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have devised a team of gardening robots a la the preprogrammed robot vacuum that scoots around the house catching the trail of crumbs left by junior.

Dictated by the plants’ needs, the robots, working as a team, are designed to pollinate, water and harvest cherry tomato plants. At $3,000 a pop, they might be a little pricey for the home green-thumber, but it’s hoped that when perfected, they will be a boon to the agriculture industry by eventually providing growers with a way to reduce natural resources and ease the difficulty of tending and harvesting crops. Under the direction of Prof. Daniela Rus, who runs the Distributed Robotics Lab at MIT, and Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant in Rus' lab, devised a two-step program for undergrad students. The first challenge was to create a "distributed robotic garden" by the end of the semester. The second part was to solve the difficulty of creating mechanical arms needed to harvest the tomatoes and/or perfecting a system that allowed the plants and robots to share information. Working in separate teams, the dozen students in the program accomplished to both.

"Agriculture contributes a lot of damage to the land, the soil, the water and the environment," Rus said. "So if we can figure out a way of using robots and automation to deliver nutrients to plants - pesticides, fertilizers, water when it's needed - instead of sort of mass spreading them, then we hope we would have an impact on the environment."

The solutions sound simple enough, but some challenges remain daunting. The plants and robots are connected to computers. Sensors in the soil tell the network of computers and robots when they need water or fertilizer. A camera takes inventory of the growing tomatoes, and guestimates when they’re ready to be picked. Certain problems with the robotics and biologics quickly became apparent, said Huan Liu, 21, a computer science major, who said:

…designing the robot to pick the delicate tomatoes was made more difficult because the fruit would grow in unreachable places, such as behind stems or above where the robot's arm could reach.

"The tomatoes, they come out of nowhere, or just in weird places."

Like the home gardener, the students discovered that once established, plants have a mind of their own, but they hope to conquer these and any other challenges presented to them.