MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab researchers have installed an indoor tomato garden tended by hacked Roombas. The idea made me nostalgic for Ken Goldberg's pioneering Tele-garden that was online from 1995 to 2004. MIT News posted a slideshow of their robot garden:
The idea for tending to a garden without human hands came from work done by Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant working in MIT Professor Daniela Rus’ Distributed Robotics Lab. Correll saw the possible applications of swarm robotics to an agricultural environment and thus the idea grew into a course in which students created robots capable of tending a small garden of tomatoes. Each robot is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking and computation. This affords them the ability to communicate: plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.
MIT's robot garden
The value of Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors dropped about $1.1 billion after the close today. When will he, and the adults around him, learn? Welp. Friday at Tesla and at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should be interesting. Have fun with that, Board of Directors and SEC officers. On Thursday afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, […]
Justin Rohrlich warns that those mobile trailer-mounted signs displaying your MPH are also recording number plates and taking photos of the driver and passengers. The cameras are being retrofitted to existing models.
Amazon is eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for warehouse workers and other hourly employees, apparently to help pay for raises. The internet retail giant pledged earlier this week to raise pay to at least $15 an hour.
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That persistent ringing in your ears after a long night at the club or a marathon concert? It’s not just an annoyance. It’s a warning. Tinnitus is no joke, and long exposure to sound levels over 85 decibels can permanently damage your ears. But if you really love the music, make sure you can listen […]
