Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have created a new type of soil that can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts. As published in ACS Materials Letters, the team’s atmospheric water irrigation system uses super-moisture-absorbent gels to capture water from the air. When the soil is heated to a certain temperature, the gels release the water, making it available to plants. When the soil distributes water, some of…
Author: Anthony James
Anthony James
With over 20 years experience in editorial management and content creation for a broad spectrum of market-leading B2B magazines and websites in the transport and technology sectors, Anthony has written news and features covering everything from airport security to autonomous vehicles, and stadium design to sustainable energy.
Cognitive Agro Pilot – an autonomous AI-based driving system for farming equipment, which was designed by Sberbank and its ecosystem member Cognitive Pilot – has been proven in industrial use across 35 regions of Russia during the 2020 harvest. From June to October 2020, over 350 New Holland, John Deere and Claas autonomous combines equipped with the Cognitive Agro Pilot system farmed over 160,000 hectares of field and harvested more than 720,000 tons of crops. With the help of Cognitive Agro Pilot, as many as 590,000 metric tons of grain crops (wheat, soybeans, barley, oats, sorghum, buckwheat, etc.) were harvested from over 130,000 hectares;…
Ceres Tag, a leader in livestock information systems using data from a proprietary smart ear tag, has expanded its extensive analytics and diagnostic range of animal performance health and welfare capabilities with the launch of eGrazor – a new sensor and pasture intake algorithm developed by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, to monitor cattle behaviour, location and interactions. Ceres Tag is the world’s first and only commercial direct-to-satellite traceability and animal welfare platform powered by a smart ear tag that provides GPS location, health and welfare monitoring, and theft detection. And now, CSIRO, together with NSW Department of Primary Industries,…
Aleph Farms Ltd, an Israeli food tech start-up that grows steaks directly from non-GMO cells isolated from a living animal, continues to make progress with its stated ambition of producing cultivated meat in outer space, enabling human life to become multi-planetary and unconditional nutrition to be available to all, on Earth and beyond. Following the success of its first experiment of producing meat on the International Space Station a year ago, in collaboration with 3D Bioprinting Solutions, Aleph Farms is now launching ‘Aleph Zero’ – a proof-of-concept program to cultivate real meat directly from various types of cow cells in…
Danish agricultural robotics company Agro Intelligence (Agrointelli) has raised €14.5 million (US$17 million) in an equity investment round co-led by Nordic Alpha Partners and Vaekstfonden, the Danish State’s investment fund. The funding will be used to scale production of its ‘Robotti’ autonomous implement carrier for arable plant production, as well as accelerate the company’s international growth plans. While most agricultural robots are dedicated to a single function or require the farmer to exclusively commit to closed systems, Agrointelli’s approach is to combine artificial intelligence, machine vision and robotics into a flexible platform solution that is built from the ground up…
Food robotics company YPC Technologies has raised US$1.8 million in funding in a seed round co-led by Hike Ventures and returning investor Real Ventures, with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, Uphill Capital, and multiple angel investors. YPC will use the financing to expand its engineering team and launch a beta version of its kitchen robot with an industry-leading multinational. Co-founded by Gunnar Grass and Camilo Perez, Montreal-based YPC Technologies is pioneering a new era of kitchen automation by building a robot that can prepare thousands of recipes, at restaurant quality, using fresh ingredients. Rather than replacing staff, the system collaborates with humans to increase…
A zero-footprint, intelligent robotic commercial kitchen assistant is now available from Miso Robotics. The Flippy Robot-on-a-Rail (ROAR) is pre-programmed to cook up to 19 various menu items, and can quickly learn new options, allowing operators to both appeal to new customers while retaining regulars with consistently cooked meals. A Flippy ROAR unit costs around US$30,000 to buy outright, but with new financing options available through Miso Robotics’ TimePayments scheme, food service providers now have an affordable and powerful automation tool to help address indoor staffing and diner limitations, enhance health and safety standards, and improve margins as delivery and takeout increase in popularity.…
British farmers will soon have a new AI-enabled tool to help counter the threat posed by black-grass weed, following the announcement of a new £1 million project (aiScope) featuring leading agricultural software specialist Farmplan, IBM Research Europe, Sheffield University, Rothamsted Research, Hummingbird Technologies, Precision Decisions, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre. During the 24-month project, data such as soil type, crops and field operations will be collected by farmers and entered into Farmplan’s Gatekeeper software, which enables growers to supply field data without any duplication. Gatekeeper then passes the data to aiScope, which is based on IBM PAIRS, a geospatial-temporal information service. aiScope…
Kubota Corporation has taken a stake in Efos, the Slovenian agtech business behind the ‘Trapview’ pest insect monitoring and forecasting platform. With thousands of traps already deployed in fields, Efos claims it has the largest database of pest data and algorithms in the world, with over 1,300 unique customers across Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Efos says Trapview provides a solution to organic, bio-controlled or chemical pest control methods for growers seeking targeted crop protection. An automated pest monitoring system for integrated pest management, Trapview consists of three tools: automated smart traps (various types) in the field; cloud-based processing with…
The research and advanced engineering department of AGCO/Fendt has revealed the latest version of its ‘Xaver’ seed sowing robot, following extensive field testing and a complete system overhaul, which sees a switch from four to three wheels and the addition of a new, embedded ‘vSet’ seed unit from Precision Planting to ensure quick and accurate seed spacing. With the help of an electrically driven control system, the vSet seed unit deposits individual grains with pinpoint accuracy at a pre-defined distance in the row. The grains are dropped in the furrow by a flexible firmer. The company is now working on adding Precision…
