Pesticides will no longer be needed in crops thanks to a robot that identifies pests 100 meters away and kills them with laser beams
Pesticides currently pose a big problem for people who buy fruits and vegetables. The use of these chemicals, however, could soon be replaced by a simple robot. The machine in question is called Photonic Fence and is able to recognize plant pests and eliminate them.
The robot “farmer” is able to build a virtual fence within which it does not allow access to insects and pests that can harm the crops. On the contrary, it allows the good insects that can promote the development of fruits and vegetables to pass through. When it detects a danger to plants, it springs into action and kills the threat with its laser beams. Photonic Fence takes about 25 milliseconds to kill a pest. It seems like a highly innovative project, but instead the robot has about 8 years of research behind it. It was created, in fact, in 2009 within the Intellectual Ventures Lab (IVL) in Seattle.
The robot farmer
Only this year, however, after several tests in the laboratory, Photonic Fence was tested in the field, in the true sense of the word. Thanks to its renewed sensors, the robot is able to identify and classify an insect even at a distance of 100 meters. It checks the shape, speed, acceleration and frequency of wing beats of various pests. If it encounters threats, it uses laser beams to kill them and can eliminate up to 20 insects per second. It is currently unclear when and if Photonic Fence will be released to the agricultural market. If the latest tests give positive results we will be faced with an invention that will revolutionize the world of agriculture, allowing the survival of some endangered species, such as bees, and bringing on the tables of consumers only products that do not have traces of pesticides or other chemicals.
.