On RFD-TV: Santosh Pitla

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02/09/2021 Added

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Santosh Pitla, associate professor of biological systems engineering, speaks live on RFD-TV, Feb. 9, 2021. He talks about the future of robotics in agriculture.

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[00:00:00.320]Well agriculture continues
[00:00:01.153]to become more mechanized.
[00:00:02.990]Given the labor shortages facing many aspects
[00:00:05.550]of our industry.
[00:00:06.520]Robotics are set to play an important role
[00:00:09.370]in how our food is produced.
[00:00:11.450]Santosh Pitla with the
[00:00:13.170]University of Nebraska, Lincoln
[00:00:14.730]joins us now with the latest insight
[00:00:16.340]on changes in the industry.
[00:00:17.670]And Santosh thanks for chatting with us here this morning.
[00:00:20.250]What can you tell us about robotics in agriculture?
[00:00:24.880]Thank you Janet.
[00:00:26.400]So by the year 2050,
[00:00:28.828]our planet will be home to 10 billion people.
[00:00:31.810]So what does that mean is,
[00:00:34.630]there'll be increase in the demand
[00:00:36.830]for food fiber
[00:00:38.550]and a lot of other agricultural products.
[00:00:41.220]So it is very important
[00:00:43.020]for us to be very efficient when we are
[00:00:45.910]in the field and manage our fertilizer,
[00:00:48.410]chemicals,
[00:00:49.510]and seeds very efficiently.
[00:00:51.420]And all while taking care of the environment.
[00:00:54.042]So Precision AG Technologies have come a long way
[00:00:57.580]but in the future,
[00:00:58.830]we got to,
[00:00:59.858]we might get to a point where we need
[00:01:02.240]to treat individual plant.
[00:01:04.080]And also instead of talking in terms
[00:01:06.620]of per acre management we'll be talking about
[00:01:09.690]per square foot management using agricultural robotics.
[00:01:13.520]What do you believe that's gonna look
[00:01:15.610]like as we March towards 2050?
[00:01:18.700]Yeah.
[00:01:19.533]So I think you might be seeing swarms of robots.
[00:01:23.290]Some of them could be small robots
[00:01:25.080]that can go under the crop.
[00:01:26.910]And some of them could be high clearance robots
[00:01:29.640]that are actually going through the field
[00:01:31.310]throughout the growing season.
[00:01:33.060]And they're gauging the health of the plants
[00:01:35.350]and they're going to apply the right amount
[00:01:38.110]of fertilizer needed.
[00:01:39.410]And the right amount
[00:01:40.260]of chemicals needed to target weeds.
[00:01:45.410]Do tools like this exist already
[00:01:47.790]or is it still something that you anticipate
[00:01:50.160]that we're gonna see farms in the future?
[00:01:53.190]Yeah so many universities are working on prototypes
[00:01:58.300]and also there are many startup companies in this space.
[00:02:01.900]Here at UNL we are very focused on,
[00:02:04.670]field robotics that producers can actually use.
[00:02:08.040]And we are developing some robotic platforms
[00:02:10.940]that can actually go down to the field
[00:02:13.180]and do cover crop planting.
[00:02:15.040]Which is one of the very important operations
[00:02:18.180]where there are many labor shortages.
[00:02:20.330]So after serving many farmers we thought you know,
[00:02:23.700]one of the first applications could be
[00:02:25.380]we could use these robots
[00:02:26.680]to do cover crop planting.
[00:02:28.430]And then we could use artificial intelligence
[00:02:31.190]techniques to target weeds.
[00:02:34.540]Especially the herbicide resistant weeds.
[00:02:38.270]We could use these robotic platforms
[00:02:40.079]to take care of them.
[00:02:42.360]All right well thank you very much
[00:02:43.650]for your insight this morning.
[00:02:44.750]We appreciate it.
[00:02:45.950]Associate Professor of Biological Systems Engineers
[00:02:48.860]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:02:50.490]Santosh Pitla.
[00:02:52.320]Joining us of course from the Husker state this morning.

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On RFD-TV: Santosh Pitla

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