Greenhouse growing game changer AI

The acquisition of Root AI and its robotic universal harvester, Virgo, is expected to provide AppHarvest with a baseline of harvesting support working alongside crop care specialists focused on more complex tasks. AppHarvest expects the game-changing advantage of the technology to be in the data the robots can collect as they harvest, which can help evaluate crop health, precisely predict yield, and optimize overall operations of the controlled environment agriculture facility.

"One of the key challenges in agriculture is accurately predicting yield," says AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb. "Many downstream decisions from work scheduling to transportation to retail planning are based on that. Any deviation between projection and actual yield can result in fire drills for numerous functions to adjust for the change, and AI can help solve for that."

Root AI co-founder and CEO Josh Lessing will take on the role of Chief Technology Officer for AppHarvest where he will take the lead in continuing to develop the robots and their AI capabilities for the network of indoor farms that AppHarvest is building. Lessing, along with co-founder Ryan Knopf who will join AppHarvest as vice president of technology, helped establish Root AI as an early leader in employing artificial intelligence in CEA. Virgo is the world's first universal harvester, which can be configured to identify and harvest multiple crops of varying sizes including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and strawberries.

Though Virgo can work indoors or out, the robot's focus has been on controlled environment agriculture. Over the past three years, it has collected the world's largest data set of tomato images to enable it to identify more than 50 varieties in multiple growing environments and at varying stages of maturity to learn how and when to harvest.

Virgo uses a set of cameras combined with an infrared laser to generate a 3D color scan of an area to determine the work it can perform. Once it maps the tomatoes, it assesses their orientation and determines if they are ripe enough to pick. The robot can be programmed to make other quality assessments as well. The scan enables the robot to find the least obstructive and fastest route to pick the crop ahead of the arrival of the robotic arm and gripper. The robot can identify hundreds of tomatoes in a fraction of a second without having to connect to the cloud. Virgo keeps score on its success rate like a video game. A built-in feedback mechanism constantly evaluates its efficiency so it learns how to harvest any given configuration of fruit most effectively.

"A piece of food — whether that's a tomato or a berry or a cucumber — is an outcome from many variables that are part of the growing process. Enhanced data collection for each plant through the robot can lead to insights that teach us precisely how to design better, more resilient food systems that are reliable and that produce more food with fewer resources," Lessing says. "Joining forces with AppHarvest is a natural fit: we want to ensure a stable, safe supply of the nutritious and healthy food that people should be eating — grown sustainably —and doing that at the scale of AppHarvest gives us the opportunity to make the greatest difference."

Gathering more data through AI enables growers to use real-time information to improve a number of sustainability efforts such as detecting and eliminating pests naturally, helping indoor farms successfully grow chemical pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.

AppHarvest is investing approximately $60 million, consisting of approximately $10 million in cash and the balance in AppHarvest common shares, to acquire Root AI.

Founded in 2018, Root AI is based in Somerville, MA, and has 19 full-time employees, all of whom are expected to join AppHarvest's technology group to help advance the mission of building a resilient and sustainable food supply.

Source and Photo courtesy of Greenhouse Grower

Source: Greenhouse Grower