Mechanical Pollination Tool & Remaining Manual Tasks

Hardware
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Hi there!

This has come to mind multiple times and I have always forgotten to post it here…
I was watching a documentary about the future of food and agriculture and they were talking about the importance of pollination… Currently they were “importing bees” which is far from automation but I have heard that in china they pay people to pollinate plants by hand.

I was wondering about some kind of detection software that could recognize the flowers and pollinate them with a “pollination tool” to automate the process… Have you considered this yet?

I’m also wondering about the remaining tasks that aren’t automated yet… I’m guessing maintaining the soil would be one and saving/storing the seeds another… What are the other activities that still require manual work? It might be interesting to have a list so we could brainstorm on solutions and come up with new tools! :smile:

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I think this is a great idea. It would require a camera and real-time processing of images to locate flowers and then something as simple as a little brush to spread the pollen. We’re far from working on a feature like this, but it seems very feasible!

As far as other processes go, the only specific things we have working are seed injection and watering. Analog sensors are coming next. Beyond that we’re hoping the community brainstorms and develops the tools they want to use. Pollination, weed detection and removal, fertilizing, pest control, plant health sensing, pruning, harvesting, etc.

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