The technology that this robot puts into play to eradicate one of the invasive insects that can reach our crops.
Agriculture is tremendously important for any state, and for this, every last detail must be taken care of, but sometimes external elements such as invading insects can destroy an entire harvest.
Now a team of researchers from the Robotics Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University They have created a robot called TartanPestcapable of stopping and eradicating the spotted lanternfly, a species of hemiptera of the Fulgoridae family native to China and Southeast Asia, and which is capable of destroying a multitude of crops.
This new robot carries a small electric tractor, a robotic arm and artificial vision, and with this it can move through cultivated fields and even forests to detect and destroy both the flies themselves and all the eggs they have left.
These eggs are very difficult for a human to locate, and this robot You can find and eradicate them in trees, rocks and even street furniture.
“Spotted lanternflies are currently concentrated in the eastern part of the nation, but are projected to spread nationwide“he said in the release Carolyn Alex, university researcher of the TartanPest team in reference to the United States. “By investing in this item now, we will be saving higher costs in the future.“.
This is how the robot was created
TartanPest was created by mounting a robotic arm on the base of a small electric tractor, and this machine makes use of a deep learning model, along with an augmented imaging dataset created from 700 images of fly egg masses. , to be able to identify and dispose of them.
The bad thing about these lanternflies is that they spread very quickly, plus they can feed on a wide variety of plants and products such as grapes, apples and nuts, and therefore reproduce very quickly.
So TartanPest is beneficial to eradicate this kind of insects invaders, and also to reduce chemical contamination of crops and to increase worker efficiency.
