University creates robot farmersUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign / 07.07.2004...Tony Grift, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign... and Yoshi Nagasaka, a visiting scholar from Japan, developed a more expensive, high-tech robot for about $7,000. This robot guides itself down crop rows using a laser mounted in front to gauge the distance to corn plants...
These low-budget robots maneuver down crop rows using what Grift calls ''the drunken sailor'' approach. The robot drifts to the left, senses a corn plant, then steers off to the right, senses another plant and steers back to the left. As a result, the robot weaves its way between the rows.
,... His partner, Nagasaka, has had considerable experience with ag robots, developing autonomous rice planters for the challenging landscape of rice paddies in Japan.
