MIT continues to spin out awesome ideas and technology. Recently, Singularity Hub highlighted the creation of a new human interface. Now, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)  is pioneering the field of automated farming. During a semester long experiment, CSAIL’s researchers created a laboratory farm: tomato plants in terra cotta pots with artificial turf for grass. The goal of the experiment: to see if these tomatoes could be grown, tended, and harvested by robot caretakers.

CSAIL’s precision agriculture robots give us a peek into the future where organic life may be tended by artificial life.

CSAIL’s plan is to take advantage of swarm robotics: many copies of the same robot acting individually but also in concert to maximize effect. CSAIL’s robots communicate with sensors embedded within the potted plants. Discussions between robots and sensors allow each plant to request additional water, and nutrients. Ripe tomatoes are identified and precisely removed from the plant.

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