{"id":337623,"date":"2017-04-05T07:30:30","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T23:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1472897"},"modified":"2017-04-05T07:30:30","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T23:30:30","slug":"researchers-use-a-pair-of-robotics-platforms-in-hopes-of-developing-drought-resistant-crops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/researchers-use-a-pair-of-robotics-platforms-in-hopes-of-developing-drought-resistant-crops\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers use a pair of robotics platforms in hopes of developing drought-resistant crops"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A team of researchers at the University of Missouri are using a pair of robotics platforms and a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system<\/a> for identifying crop strains resistant to heat, drought and flood. The research is part of an ongoing attempt to cross-breed hearty crops in order\u00a0to maintain food production in the wake of severe conditions brought on by climate change.<\/p>\n

The system developed by the team is comprised of two primary robots \u2014 a mobile tower that stands watch at the edge of the crop and a roaming \u2018bot deployed by the system to take a closer look. The resulting data includes 3D scans of the plants (corn and sorghum at present), along with temperature, humidity and light intensity readings taken at different heights \u2014 each of which tend to vary greatly, due to an increasing tendency to plant crops closer together.<\/p>\n