AI and Agriculture: How to Pick an Apple

What does it take to teach a robot to pick an apple? Let’s find out.  In today’s episode, we will explore how AI technologies are helping agriculture solve some of the world’s biggest problems – from world hunger to protecting the environment to a labor shortage down on the farm.  

Robots, drones and machine learning are being used by farmers around the world to monitor crop health, soil conditions and weather patterns -- so they can optimize the yield from their crops while conserving scarce resources such as water.  AI is protecting the environment when robots identify weeds and then eliminate them one at a time – a precision that dramatically reduces broader usage of potentially harmful chemicals and herbicides.  AI-powered self-driving tractors and robots are performing tasks such as watering, spraying and harvesting crops  to help farmers grow food from fields that might otherwise go untended due to a worldwide labor shortage.  Drones equipped with high-resolution cameras are monitoring crops for real-time signs of disease and pest infestations, thereby securing the safety of food for generations to come.  Across the USA and around the planet, AI is quickly becoming the newest tool in the farmer’s toolshed.  

Joining us are four experts in AI and agriculture: George Kantor is a research professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.  Pat Schnable is a distinguished professor at Iowa State University, director of its Plant Sciences Instituten and a co-founder of an ag-tech startup EnGeniusAg.  Abhi Silwal is a Senior Project Scientist at CMU’s Robotics Institute. Terry Bates is the Director of the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Lab, a Senior Research Associate at Cornell’s School of Integrated Plant Sciences and the director of the Efficient Vineyard Project.