Can Artificial Intelligence promote and automate pollination?

The glorious blooms of sunflowers that are a common sight on most European highways are a sight to behold. However, over the years, they have certainly lost their bulk. To the extent, you can see the hairy stems and coarsely-toothed leaves through the bald spots. The steep decline in the population of bees is to blame. Like the sunflower, most flowers rely on bees to pollinate. The sinister little creatures with nasty sting play an integral role in the food chain. As they diminish, so would a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Or would they?

Researchers from around the world are looking into how Artificial Intelligence can save Earth from an agricultural doomsday. They believe that AI will provide an efficient alternative to organic pollination. Although a world without bees may seem like a far-fetched idea, bee deaths have been on the rise for some time now. In the six years leading up to 2013, we lost more than 10 million to colony collapse disorder, which is nearly twice the normal rate of loss. Environmental pollution caused by rapid industrialization is also a major threat. When the losses outpace the ability of colonies to regenerate, it can lead to a significant food crisis. Along with taking measures to regenerate their colonies, we have to actively look for ways to help plants survive without them.

Robot that pollinates greenhouse tomatoes

Pollination in greenhouses is usually carried out by commercially developed bumblebee hives. However, they don’t work well in certain conditions. In fact, they are banned in Australia owing to their notorious record of invasion. They form feral populations, which are considered a threat to native animals and plants. As much as they play a role in pollination, they could also pave way for the increased growth of weeds. It is hard for the greenhouse industry in Australia to survive under these circumstances.

Arruga AI Farming, a company based in Israel, is developing an incredible solution to tackle this crisis — robotic pollinators. Their mechanical pollination module will replace manual pollination and the work of bees. This way, the impact of environmental changes and pesticides on greenhouse cultivation can be brought down to a great extent.

Arruga hopes to transform Australia’s greenhouse farming sector. In the first stage, they are focusing on tomatoes which are usually pollinated by hand. The artificial pollinators glide along rows of plants to identify flowers that are ready for pollination. They mimic the buzz sound sent by bumblebees by creating air pulses with the help of artificial intelligence. The air pulses pollinate the cultivation as needed from time to time.

Costa Group’s multi-million-dollar greenhouse facility in Guyra, New South Wales, is currently testing Arruga’s pollinating robot.

AI-powered micro air vehicle conceptual framework for future farming

Yi Chen and Yun Li, senior members of IEEE Access, lay out a conceptual technical roadmap of autonomous pollination for future farming using robotic micro air vehicle pollinators (MPrs). The autonomous MPrs leverage the potential of artificial intelligence as well as human expertise in the loop to modernize and automate the agricultural industry.

Owing to their characteristic small size, energy efficiency, and agility, MAVs with flapping wings offer a wide range of potential in civilian and military applications too. Each MAV (Micro Air Vehicle) of the robotic swarm is controlled by a central control system (CCS) via wireless signal connections. Computational intelligence (CI) is a set of nature-inspired approaches that offer a wealth of capability for complex problem-solving. They collect real-time field data from crops and flowers using cameras and other sensors (e.g. thermal sensors).

The conceptual loops of the AI-in-the-loop (AIL, loop ‘H-I-K’) and Human-in-the-loop (HIL, loop ‘H-J-K’) are presented. They will create a feedback system that lets people correct robots’ errors or the way backward.

Oracle partners with the World Bee Project to monitor bee population

We discussed how bees can be replaced with Artificial Intelligence. What if we applied the same technology to prevent the extinction of bees? Robotics, wireless technologies, and computer vision will collect new insights to help develop solutions to the issue. For example, microphones, cameras, and other internet-of-things sensors can be used to see invasive predators and collect data from bees and hives.

A bee hive’s health is determined by the sound it produces. Artificial intelligence can be used to listen to the hives and determine the colony strength, behaviour, temperature, height, etc. Hornets, a potential threat to bee populations, can be detected using sensors.

After this, the data is fed to the Oracle Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms which analyze the data and look for patterns. These algorithms can predict the behaviors of the hive. Insights are shared on a global network with beekeepers, conservationists, students, researchers, and even interested citizens through the World Bee Project. They can interact with the data, work with it through the hive network’s open API, and discuss it via chatbots.

Parting thoughts

AI is the future of agriculture. The research and developments towards automating the agriculture industry look promising. And AI needs to be an enabler that is accessible to all, not a stumbling roadblock for want of experts, computing power and other resources.

To solve the many problems of AI adoption, Mindsync has created a decentralized community-driven platform that helps solve business tasks using AI (Machine Learning / Data Science) competitions. We bring together specialists from different sectors in a competitive environment to promote the mass adoption of AI. Businesses of all sizes can put up their requirements and either chose to select from ready-to-use enterprise-ready solutions or can create a competition for the experts in the community to participate in. The best solution wins and competition and the solution is then bought by the business creating the competition. It is a win-win for all.