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.

Developing and installing sensors that accurately measure the amount of feed in the silos in each pig farm and designing algorithms that can achieve a more efficient distribution of feed from production plants to each farm. The study was carried out on some 500 silos on farms in the province of Girona, Spain, as well as in Wales, on the Swedish island of Gotland and in the area surrounding Manchester, England.

Scientists have used gene editing technology to create female-only and male-only mice litters with 100% efficiency.

The Nigerian solar-powered system aims to reduce food waste and its climate footprint by reducing post-food harvest losses Food waste is a significant driver in climate change, as 6% of all global greenhouse emissions come from the production of food that is never eaten. This creates a vicious cycle of more extreme climate, which makes food production more difficult and exacerbates poverty, malnutrition and inequality across society.

Grover is not your average farmer. It can lift more than 1,000 pounds and assists in the monitoring, watering, and harvesting of a wide variety of crops, from leafy greens to strawberries.

Across the world, the agriculture industry is facing challenges. The global population is projected to increase to 10 billion by 2050. Feeding this many people will require a 70% increase from today's global food production.

Thursday 18 November 2021 - Can Technology Innovation Awaken a Sleeping Giant? This webinar includes a summary of the key issues facing global agriculture; emerging applications of agricultural robotics; an overview of some of the key developments in the field; and much more.

Researchers have invented bubble casting, a new way to make soft robots using "fancy balloons" that change shape in predictable ways when inflated with air.

When grazing goats that are wearing this new technology hear a beep, it alerts them to stay within the invisible boundary of the grazing area. If they don't, a digital collar around their necks gives them a small electric shock.

Electrifying one medium-sized tractor in California reduces carbon emissions by as much as replacing 45 cars with EVs. Gridtractor will help farmers seamlessly integrate electric charging and vehicle to grid into their operations to strengthen the power grid with its smart energy platform. In addition, the company estimates farms can save 55-75 percent on fuel costs by going electric, and up to 90 percent by supplying stored power to irrigation pumps and to the grid.

Friday 12 November 2021 - covering recent progress with smart cities and what is likely to happen in 2022. It deals with both new cities and existing ones that are radically modernising. Learn how the objectives are now far more ambitious

Yellow leaf disease, a major sugarcane pest in Brazil, is caused by a virus resistant to thermal treatment. An infected plantation can be saved only by growing plantlets in tissue culture in the laboratory and planting them out, a time-consuming process that requires specialized infrastructure and personnel.

Cultured meat has come a long way since 2013. What was once a concept from the realms of science fiction, made in tiny quantities in research labs for astronomical costs has now become an emerging industry, with start-ups across the world racing to become the first to successfully produce cultured meat on a commercial scale.