World's First Autonomous Robot-run Farm

Feb 08, 2016

A Japanese firm, Spread, is building the world's first farm run by robots. The facility, the Kameoka Plant farm uses human labor and produces 21,000 heads of lettuce each day, and it plans to increase output to 30,000 heads using robots by 2017. 

Robots, looks like conveyor belts with arms tech will be used for watering plants, planting seeds, and trimming lettuce heads controlling nearly every aspect of this indoor lettuce production operation. An indoor facility within the farm would grow plants by using LED lights and the crops will be grown on racks.

The project has been estimated to cost over $16 million, and the company is hoping to earn $8 million a year with the farm. The new business model will cut labor costs by 50 percent and also reduce construction costs by 25 percent and energy demand by 30 percent. However, seed planting will still be done by people, but the rest of the process, including harvesting, will be automated.

The new automated veggie factory will not use pesticides or herbicides. It will minimize water use by recycling 98 percent of it. Lighting, temperature and moisture will be automated in order to optimize plant growth. A prototype factory in Kameoka is a city in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, produces about 21,000 heads of lettuce each day. The products are being shipped to approximately two thousand stores in Tokyo and the Kansai region, known as Vege-tus.

Source:http://gizmodo.com/japanese-company-to-build-the-worlds-first-autonomous-f-1756346040