International Courant
NOORDWIJKERHOUT, Netherlands — Theo works weekdays, weekends and at night time and by no means complains of a sore again, regardless of spending hour after hour doing what for an unusual farmhand can be a grueling job of checking the Dutch tulip fields for diseased flowers.
The boxy robotic – named after a retired worker of the WAM Pennings farm close to the Dutch North Beach – is a brand new high-tech weapon within the battle to eradicate illnesses from the bulb fields as they erupt in a riot of spring color.
On a windy spring morning Tuesday, the robotic stumbled previous rows of yellow and crimson “goldpiece” tulips, checking every plant and, if mandatory, killing diseased bulbs to forestall the unfold of the tulip-busting virus. After harvest, the useless bulbs are faraway from the wholesome bulbs in a sorting shed.
The virus hinders the expansion and improvement of crops, resulting in smaller and weaker flowers. It additionally weakens the bulb itself, finally stopping them from blooming.
As a part of efforts to deal with the virus, 45 robots are patrolling tulip fields throughout the Netherlands because the climate warms and farmers strategy the height season, when their flower bulbs develop into big colourful patchworks that appeal to vacationers from around the globe.
Up to now, this work was carried out by human “illness spotters,” says Allan Visser, a third-generation tulip farmer who’s utilizing the robotic for its second rising season.
“You can additionally purchase a really good sports activities automobile,” Visser mentioned on Tuesday for the value of the robotic – the makers say the robotic prices 185,000 euros ($200,000).
“However I choose the robotic, as a result of a sports activities automobile doesn’t take away the sick tulips from our subject. Sure, it’s costly, however there are fewer and fewer individuals who can really see the sick tulips,” he added.
It is rather a lot slower than a sports activities automobile, which rolls via the fields on tracks at a velocity of 1 kilometer per hour, chasing the telltale crimson stripes that kind on the leaves of contaminated flowers.
“It has cameras on the entrance and takes 1000’s of photographs of the tulips. It can then decide, primarily based on the AI mannequin, whether or not the tulip is sick or not,” explains Visser, who calls it “precision agriculture”.
“The robotic has discovered to acknowledge and deal with this,” he added.
Erik de Jong of H2L Robotics, the corporate that makes the robots, says that synthetic intelligence helps them determine diseased flowers and that they will use very correct GPS coordinates to find out which flowers have to be destroyed.
“The guts of the machine is the data we put into the AI mannequin. The data comes from tulip farmers. So we use the data of the tulip farmers and mix it in an AI mannequin,” he mentioned.
Theo van der Voort, who gave his title to the robotic on the WAM Pennings farm, and who retired after 52 years of trying to find sick flowers, is impressed.
“It is unbelievable,” he mentioned. “He sees as a lot as I do.”
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AI robotic spots sick tulips to sluggish the unfold of illnesses via the Dutch bulb fields
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