Page 24 - aruba-today-20181201

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Saturday 1 december 2018

Robots in the field: farms embracing autonomous technology

By KELVIN CHAN able to automate virtu-
AP Business Writer ally everything," said Tim
EAST MEON, England (AP) Chambers, a fruit farmer
— Faced with seesawing who's not involved in the
commodity prices and the trial. Some jobs are harder
pressure to be more effi- to automate, such as har-
cient and environmentally vesting delicate raspberries
friendly, farmer Jamie But- or strawberries by hand,
ler is trying out a new work- but even that is coming,
er on his 450-acre farm in said Chambers, a member
England's Hampshire coun- of Britain's National Farmers
tryside. Union.
Methodically inspecting Florida's Harvest Croo Ro-
Butler's winter wheat crop botics , Spain's Agrobot ,
for weeds and pests, the la- Britain's Dogtooth Technol-
borer doesn't complain or ogies and Belgium's Octin-
even break a sweat. That's ion are all developing ber-
because it's a four-wheel ry-picking bots. California
robot dubbed "Tom" that startup Iron Ox and Japan's
uses GPS, artificial intel- Spread grow vegetables in
ligence and smartphone automated indoor farms.
technology to digitally map Bosch startup Deepfield
the field. Robotics is working on a
Tom's creator, the Small Ro- Joe Allnutt, lead roboticist at British startup company the Small Robot Company, inspects a weeding robot that punch-
bot Company, is part of a farming robot named Tom as part of a trial in East Meon, southern England, Friday Nov. 30, 2018. es them into the ground.
wave of "agri-tech" startups Associated Press Last year, British researchers
working to transform pro- method of doing that, then farmers. As such, it not only an AI to be able to achieve planted, monitored, tend-
duction in a sector that is that's a really, really good helps economically, but that." ed and harvested a barley
under economic strain due thing," said Butler, one of 20 it also lowers the environ- Commercial sales of the crop using only autono-
to market pressures to keep British farmers enlisted in a mental impact of farming. full, multi-robot system is mous machines, in what
food cheap, a rising global yearlong trial. "What we're doing is stuff still years away, with larger- they said was a world first.
population and the uncer- Next year, the British startup that people can't do," said scale testing planned for A more fundamental prob-
tainties of climate change. plans to start testing two Ben Scott-Robinson, co- 2021. They represent the lem "will be the cost of
Most robots are still only be- more robots controlled by founder of the Small Robot next step in the evolution of building those robots and
ing tested, but they offer a an artificial intelligence sys- Company . "It's not physi- automation for farms. Self- the research that has to go
glimpse of how automation tem that will work alongside cally possible for a farmer driving tractors and robot- into making them," Cham-
will spread from manufac- Tom, autonomously doing to go round and check ic milking machines have bers said. The low cost of
turing plants into rural ar- precision "seeding, feeding each individual plant and been in use for years and, air freight could still make
eas. and weeding." then treat that plant indi- more recently, unmanned it cheaper to, for example,
"If we can keep our costs The aim is to drastically cut vidually. That's only possible aerial drones that monitor fly in fruit from other coun-
to an absolute minimum by down on fertilizer and pesti- when you have something crops have gone into ser- tries where labor is cheap-
being on the leading edge cide use to lower costs and as tireless as a robot and as vice. er, he said.q
of technologies as one boost profits for struggling focused and accurate as Eventually, farms "will be

To encourage more use, Instagram to allow sharing with fewer

By BARBARA ORTUTAY users can mean a reluc- Once that's done, you can
AP Technology Writer tance to share more per- create a story just for those
NEW YORK (AP) — Keep sonal stuff. So, they are people. Friends aren't noti-
your friends close ... and adding ways to communi- fied when you add them
your close friends closer? cate with smaller groups. to the list, or if you remove
Instagram is adding a fea- This is why Facebook is them later, and they can't
ture to make it easier to beefing up its Groups fea- request to be added. But
share photos and videos ture, and why messaging they'll eventually know:
with fewer folks. apps are so popular. Stories they get this way
Called Close Friends, the Robby Stein, product di- will have a green circle
new feature lets users share rector at Instagram, said around them, rather than
Stories — photos and vid- the feature took more the usual pink.
eos that disappear after 24 than a year to complete. You can create just one
hours — with people they It starts rolling out to users Close Friends group,
put on a special list. The Friday. though, rather than sep-
idea is people may feel To use it, first create a list arate ones for families,
more comfortable sharing In this Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, photo, the Instagram of close friends by going friends and other circles,
some things with just close app logo is displayed on a mobile screen in Los Angeles. to your profile and tapping as you can on the main
friends, rather than all fol- the icon with three horizon- Facebook service. Stein
lowers. Associated Press tal lines. Instagram will sug- said Instagram wanted
Regular posts would still lowers. Facebook already Instagram hasn't. gest people to add based to keep things simple and
appear to everyone, lets people narrow audi- Social-media companies on how often you interact observed that when there
though users have the op- ences for individual posts, are quickly learning that with them, or you can pick are multiple lists, people
tion of pre-approving fol- but the Facebook-owned bigger audience sizes for your own. don't tend to use them.q