The LightWeeder is a world-first eye-safe, herbicide-free, carbon neutral, commercially viable weeding system delivered by lightweight autonomous field robots via UK agri-robotics company and Agri-EPI Centre member, Earth Rover.

Scientists are using artificial intelligence to set a new world record for producing algae as a reliable, economic source for biofuel that can be used as an alternative fuel source for jet aircraft and other transportation needs.

Just how much carbon is in the soil? That's a tough question to answer at large spatial scales, but understanding soil organic carbon at regional, national, or global scales could help scientists predict overall soil health, crop productivity, and even worldwide carbon cycles.

Using a unique hydrogel, scientists have created a solar-driven system that successfully grows spinach by using water drawn from the air while producing electricity. The proof-of-concept design offers a sustainable, low-cost strategy to improve food and water security for people living in dry-climate regions.

The use of hydrogel water holding enhancing water and nutrient use efficiency will become more important over time, especially in arid and semiarid regions with limiting water availability.

Russia and Canada will grow wheat and temperate crops in their former icy wastelands as global warming progresses. The trend is already upwards.

With the advancement of technologies and robotics, as well as the increasing challenges facing the agricultural industry (e.g., labor shortage, high labor costs, etc.), robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are widely considered as an approach to revolutionize farming. Robots have several advantages over human labor including higher accuracy and efficiency, better consistency and reliability, lower operational costs, and many others. As such, more and more farmers decide to adopt robots (also commonly known as Agbots) and automation to make their businesses more sustainable and efficient.

Gymnast of chemicals, the awesome hydrogel is a 3D network of hydrophilic polymers like a giant molecule that can swell in water and hold at least 10% of water while maintaining a well-defined structure. Medical hydrogels currently dominate hydrogel publicity, patents, and research but the rest will become a larger business 2022-2042.

Tevel, founded in 2017 in Israel, is developing autonomous flying robots for fruit picking combining AI with computer vision, advanced robotics, aeronautical engineering, state-of-the-art flight control and data fusion and perception.

Thursday 3 February 2022 - Solutions to Modern Agriculture Issues - Agricultural Robotics Market Gaining Momentum. In this webinar, Yulin Wang will talk through the key enabling technologies used in agricultural robotics, explain why different applications have different levels of development, and analyze how this trend will change and evolve in the upcoming decade.

Thursday 10 February 2022 - This webinar looks at hydrogels beyond the medical applications that currently dominate the publicity, patents and research. Come away aware that someone will make a new billion-dollar business out of this and greatly benefit society, from smart cities to ample food, water, and electricity with zero emissions and so much more.

This report is focused on key technologies (e.g., AI, sensors, GPS, imaging systems, etc.) and applications (weeding, harvesting, monitoring, etc.). It analyses recent challenges in the agriculture industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how robotics and technology developments will change the business of agriculture, enabling ultra-precision farming, helping to mitigate the challenges, and maintaining sustainable developments.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the largest consumer electronics event in the world. The last in-person event was 2020 where more than 4,400 exhibitors and 180,000 attendees showcased the latest consumer tech innovations in Las Vegas. 2022 was a hybrid event, with in person talks as well as a digital platform. In this subscriber-only article, the IDTechEx mobility team covers mobility trends from the digital platform.

Key themes and insights in the world of agricultural robotics

John Deere has revealed a fully autonomous tractor that's ready for large-scale production. The machine combines Deere's 8R tractor, TruSet-enabled chisel plow, GPS guidance system, and new advanced technologies. The autonomous tractor will be available to farmers later this year.

No longer just a dream of vegetarians and vegans, fake meat is becoming more widely available in grocery stores and restaurants. And more options are almost certainly on the way. One team has developed a new combination of plant-based ingredients tailored for 3D printing meat alternatives. Their most successful recipes required an odd-sounding addition: cocoa butter, derived from cocoa beans of chocolate fame.

Inspired by the natural dexterity of the human hand, a team of engineers has created a reconfigurable hybrid robotics system that is able to grip a variety of objects: from the small, soft and delicate to the large, heavy and bulky. This technology is expected to impact a range of industries, involving food assembly, vertical farming and fast-moving consumer goods packaging, which will progressively automate more of their operations in the coming years.

Semiconductors are moving away from rigid substrates, which are cut or formed into thin discs or wafers, to more flexible plastic material and even paper thanks to new material and fabrication discoveries. The trend toward more flexible substrates has led to fabrication of numerous devices, from light-emitting diodes to solar cells and transistors.

Across a vast array of robotic hands and clamps, there is a common foe: the heirloom tomato. You may have seen a robotic gripper deftly pluck an egg or smoothly palm a basketball - but, unlike human hands, one gripper is unlikely to be able to do both and a key challenge remains hidden in the middle ground.

To further improve animal husbandry and livestock management, there is an urgent need to continuously collect phenotype data from individual animals. Researchers have devised a methodology that can recognize Holstein cows in the milking station by the pattern of their coat using artificial intelligence.