Using artificial intelligence, agricultural robots are on the rise

SLOWLY BUTD surely, a spidery machine about the size of a golf cart swings an electrode over a tray of plants. Every few seconds there is a small puff of smoke as a weed keels over, having been zapped with a high voltage. The device doing the zapping is a prototype weeding robot developed by the Small Robot Company, a new firm operating out of an old munitions depot near Salisbury, in south-west Britain.Such machines, called “agribots”, are appearing in many shapes and sizes from a variety of companies. Muddy tracks from other prototypes lead into the Small Robot Company’s workshop, where a row of 3 printers make bright orange components out of plastic. That makes parts easier to find should they fall off in a field, which is a sure sign that farmers are at work here, with roboticists and scientists.