我很小的时候就接触到了机器人. 当我还是个孩子的时候, 而不是乐高积木, my parents gifted me one of the early versions of Lego Mindstorms—a mini computer that lets you add actuators and sensors to classic Lego. So instead of building a blocky - and completely inaccurate - representation of the ‘Taj Mahal’ (garnished with pirates and scuba divers), I was covering the floors of our house with parallel strips of black and white tape, building a line following robot that had the ‘Taj Mahal’ on top of it.
但即使是在年轻的时候, I didn’t find my true passion for robotics until I was studying at university.
“I found myself more and more enthralled by the intricate harmony between the physical system and the electronics and software that moved it.”
现在, 我可以把我的迷恋和目标结合起来, collaborate with a team of specialized scientists and engineers to transform how food is grown around the world.
随着科技的发展,农业正达到临界点 现在. 世界各地的农民都面临着日益严峻的挑战 极端天气事件, growing pest pressure and the looming need to feed a growing global population——而 承担风险 这就是“行业的本质”.
在过去, conventional agricultural practices helped farmers fend off a lot of the short-term risks they faced, but we now know that a lot of these methods have caused signifi可以t long-term damage. This big issue has presented a big opportunity – not only to help heal the land of each farmer but to help heal our planet as a whole.
在Terramera, 例如, we’re developing robotic solutions to help farmers better understand the risks—and the options—they have to transition to regenerative practices that will 提高作物品质,增加利润, 让农场更有弹性,同时吸收二氧化碳.
根据你是谁,“机器人”可以有不同的含义. 对一些人来说,它会让人想起类人机器人, R2-D2或者擎天柱, 对其他人来说,它是一辆自动驾驶汽车或Roomba, 对一些人来说,这是一条庞大的自动化装配线. I tend to lump anything that moves under the control of software into the broad category of ‘a robot’ (yes, 我知道这很宽泛, things like the engine in most modern cars would be considered a robot - or diving deeper, 一个可以震动的手机——但你试着去争论它). 根据这个定义,机器人几乎无处不在!
看看Terramera, 专注于更复杂的“机器人”, bbin游戏官网有移液机器人来加速实验室工作, 自动化系统,协助植物生长和评估, 用于制造的3D打印机和cnc, a fleet of drones and rovers for autonomously collecting data in the field.
就像卑微的蚯蚓, not-so-humble complex robots are working their way to becoming a farmer’s best friend too. 机器人可以收割蔬菜,采摘西红柿和 不用一滴杀虫剂就能铲除杂草. Drones gather aerial images that 可以 help farmers quickly assess crop health, sophisticated robotic greenhouses—like our own climate-controlled automated growth chambers—are popping up in unlikely regions, 在人口密集地区种植粮食.
As robots take on more responsibility, failures 可以 result in serious outcomes, like loss of life. 进一步说, 和很多电影一样, 书, 故事就是这样, robots 可以 come out looking just plain evil when people fixate on the negative outcomes that are possible from their growing dominance in our lives. 仍然, 机器人将继续存在, currently they are making powerful technological advances to revolutionize the way we grow food, we just need to make sure they’re created properly and ethically.
机器人:1人类:0
你一次能装几个螺丝? 两个? 如果你的脚够灵活的话,可能有四个. 除非你训练多年, I’d bet you’d have a hard time holding a tool with submillimeter precision for more than a few seconds. 机器人可以被设计成同时做很多事情, repeating the same task with minimal loss of precision for days on end. While having robots take over jobs scares some people, giving menial tasks to robots tends to 创造更多的就业机会这些工作通常更有趣. 在Terramera, our rover and the payload we developed allow us to test soil at precise depths without time and labour-intensive manual soil sampling, freeing up time for our soil team to do more interesting and in-depth analysis.
机器人:2人:0
你知道谁不喜欢洗碗? 每一个人. You know who doesn’t (currently) contain the capacity for love and boredom? 一个机器人. 机器人被设计来执行无聊的、刺激性的任务. So, while it’s another score for Team Robot, I take this as a win for the humans.
机器人:3人:0
bbin游戏官网幸运的人类可以体验到甜蜜, 酸, 咸, bitter and savory tastes on our chosen pizza toppings—but our senses are limited in comparison to our fabricated counter parts. 你能看到不同方向或不同光谱吗? bbin游戏官网已经 教机器人如何翻译 hyperspectral images so they 可以 detect very small changes in the physiology of plants. In turn, this helps farmers better measure, monitor, predict, plan and care for their crops.
机器人- 3人类- 1
Humans are better at being creative; but robots 可以 要有创意. In reality, the tricky part here is that we’re still learning 是什么让人类有创造力,新想法从何而来. 另一方面,a 由算法生成的绘画 最近的售价超过了43.2万英镑. 许多例子 show that while robots 可以 generate creative work by being fed information by humans, 他们缺乏情感, 以及产生强有力的创造性工作的理解, the debate is ongoing on when or if we’ll be able to recreate that ability.
机器人- 3人- 2
Robots are often taught to perform tasks in routine but 可以’t make decisions when faced with novel scenarios. For example, self-driving cars perform very well when driving along well-known routes. 但再加上一个意想不到的天气事件, or a few plastic bags being blown in the wind – a scenario where there’s little or no training data – and the perception system has a hard time making an informed decision. People are working on this by creating more thorough and robust datasets in the agricultural domain, like this one of humans in all poses in apple and orange orchards,这样机器人就可以安全地在任何地方工作.
机器人- 3人- 3
bbin游戏官网只是更擅长而已... 暂时地. 并不是说人们不喜欢 正在努力, it’s just yet to be seen if a hug from an automoton will provide 同样的健康益处 就像一个人类的拥抱.
最终, 机器人可以做许多bbin游戏官网不愿做的工作, which allows us to concentrate and focus on more important tasks, 比如治愈bbin游戏官网的星球. Scaling regenerative agriculture globally requires all hands on deck—human or bionic.