Our Calling
Dr. Chong Xu and her team are trying to develop the robots for next generation agriculture. While the rudimentary labor-intensive agricultural jobs were replaced by big machines during the second wave of agriculture revolution, the trend now is to return to the labor-intensive (or rather robot-intensive) era – to replace the aggregate agronomic methodologies with individual operations done by robots at a more refined area of the field, or even on a particular crop stalk. These operations include planting, watering, fertilization, weeding, harvesting, etc. The aggregate agronomic operations do not only waste energy but also contaminate the environment. For example, the large-scale use of herbicide in the weeding process inevitably leaves some carcinogenic chemicals in the soil which eventually enters the livestock and human beings. Besides, and collective irrigation but also result in nitrate leaching, which pollutes river and estuary ecosystems over large areas such as the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, the current agricultural way also burdens the farmers economically. The price of owning a big machines is too much for owners of small or medium scaled farms. It's not only expensive but also hard to find experienced labor workers during peak seasons. For the above described reasons, we have the special calling to develop the prototype of the next-generation Agbot. The vehicle we currently developed will be used as the platform with potential mount of robotic arms to carry out agronomical operations, such as sampling collection, individual irrigation, planting, and weeding., etc. The precision required by individual agricultural care can thus be achieved by allowing the robot to work day and night, 24/7, indefatigably.
Our Vision
Our future vision is to integrate the Agbot with the microgrid currently developed by Dr. Greg Mowry. This will allow the Agbot to be powered with the renewable energy, further reducing the carbon footprints. This Fully Autonomous Self-Contained Agricultural Robotic System (FASTCARS) is made up of: the Hive containing renewable energy generator, battery storage, and battery exchanging and docking station, where the depleted battery of the Agbot will be moved back to the battery farm for recharging and the new battery will be installed.