AI robot monitors the health of tulips in fields

印刷用画面を開く

Posted

Category: (Self-Study) Technology/Innovations

Switch to Watch View >

Storyline

Hide Storyline

An artificial intelligence robot called Theo is a new high-tech weapon in the battle to root out disease from Dutch tulip fields. The robot, which checks each plant and kills diseased plants, is replacing a dwindling number of human “sickness spotters” who patrol bulb fields on the lookout for diseased flowers.

On a spring morning, the robot trundles along rows of yellow and red “goudstuk” tulips, checking each plant and, when necessary, killing diseased bulbs to prevent the spread of the tulip-breaking virus.

The dead bulbs are removed from healthy ones in a sorting warehouse after they have been harvested. The virus stunts the growth and development of plants leading to smaller and weaker flowers. It also weakens the bulb itself, eventually leaving it unable to flower.

“In every tulip field, there’s a certain percentage of sick tulips. And every year, they need to be taken out in order to prevent the sick tulips from infecting other healthy tulips. And, we used to do it always by hand and we could never do everything in one year because it was too much. And now, we have the robot here with us. And, the robot is really amazing. It can work through the day, through the night, through the weekends. It never takes a break. And it does it also better than humans,” says Allan Visser, a third-generation tulip farmer who is using the robot for the second growing season.

The robot rolls on caterpillar tracks through fields at one kilometer per hour (0.6 mph) hunting out the telltale red stripes that form on the leaves of infected flowers.

Erik de Jong of H2L Robotics, the company that makes the robots, says artificial intelligence helps them identify sick flowers, and very precise GPS coordinates allow them to pinpoint the flowers that need to be destroyed.

However, Theo’s skills and efficiency come with a hefty price tag. The robot costs 185,000 euros ($200,000).

As part of efforts to tackle tulip-breaking virus, there are 45 robots patrolling tulip fields across the Netherlands as the weather warms up and farmers approach peak season. 

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Script

Hide Script

[Theo robot in the field of tulips]

[Man walking alongside robot]

[Robot treating sick tulips]

[Allan Visser, a tulip farmer approaches a robot]

[Allan Visser and a robot control system]

Allan Visser (interview): “In every tulip field there’s a certain percentage of sick tulips, and every year they need to be taken out in order to prevent the sick tulips from infecting other healthy tulips. And, we used to do it always by hand and we could never do everything in one year because it was too much. And now, we have the robot here with us. And, the robot is really amazing. It can work through the day, through the night, through the weekends. It never takes a break. And it does it also better than humans. Yeah.”

[Robot working the fields]

Allan Visser (interview): “So this is an example of the sick tulip. You can recognize it by the red stripes on the leaf. So this is for example a healthy one. No red stripes. And this is a sick one. And the robot has learned to recognize this and to treat it.”

[Robot operating on the tulip field]

Erik de Jong (interview): “The heart of the machine is the knowledge that we put into the AI model. The knowledge comes from tulip farmer. So we use the knowledge of the tulip farmers. We combine it into an AI model and then in the machine, that knowledge is used by these three cameras to take the images, from three angles. The angles are combined to find very precise GPS coordinates of the diseased plants, using the GPS antenna on top of the machine. That GPS coordinate is remembered and as the robot passes, we actuate this robot. There’s another camera which takes a final image for very precise positioning of the injector.”

[H2L Robotics promotion film about the robot Theo]

Allan Visser (interview): “Yeah. You could also buy a very nice sports car from (instead of) this robot. But, I prefer to have the robot because the sports car doesn’t take out the sick tulips from our field. Yeah, it is expensive, but there are less and less people who can really see the sick tulip by their own eye. So it’s also a kind of necessity to buy it, because the ‘sick seeker’ of our tulips fields, that’s how we call it, they are like, dying out.“

[The robot in the tulip field]

This script was provided by The Associated Press.

The related lesson for this video will be published next Tuesday.