An automated robot gardener has shown its nurturing side by matching humans in trials of growing vegetables – and doing so with more efficient use of water.
Simeon Adebola at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have developed an automated plot called AlphaGardencontaining a mix of plant species and tested to see if it can perform as well as a team of six expert human gardeners, each with an average of 10 years of gardening experience.
The robot and human-run plots both contain pairs of eight different common edible vegetables, such as kale, Swiss chard and radicchio. Where the people…