Robot can navigate cornfield, spray fertilizer

Add “robot” to your list of agricultural buzzwords.

MIT Technology Review reports that Rowbot, a company out of Minnesota, has engineered a robot that navigates the spaces between corn rows, sprays fertilizer on the stalks during crucial growing times and even helps to cut down phosphorus runoff.

Here’s how it works: the fertilizer is sprayed from both sides. The robot uses both GPS and laser-scanning technologies to know when it is at the end of a field and to stay between rows of corn.

In the future, the company will work to improve the robot’s technology and also test robots for seed-planting cover crops.

Via: MIT Technology Review > A nimble-wheeled farm robot goes to work in Minnesota