Technology.am (Apr. 9, 2009) — The robot could someday plant, tend and harvest your garden for you.

A new robotic gardener is being developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“Right now we are just using cherry tomatoes, but in the future I could see us doing all kinds of fruits and vegetables.” said Nikolaus Correll, a professor of MIT.

The scientists work with small tomatoes because they have a small robot. It is based on the circular Roomba robotic floor cleaners, 12 inches diameter. On top of the Roomba sits the robotic arm and an on-board computer, in this case a small Dell laptop. A robotic arm, equipped with a camera and flat gripper, extends an additional 31 inches.

This robot pulls up to a docking station and “pees” on a tomato plant to water it. The robot moves to another tomato plant and uses the Web cam to recognize a tomato and grab it with the gripper.

The robotic gardener “combines a lot of autonomous robotic movements: force control, vision, movement,” said Correll.

Sanjiv Singh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has been developing robots for use in large-scale agriculture.

“The long-term goal is that someone could have a little 10 meter by 10 meter greenhouse that would just spit out fruits and vegetables,” said Correll. “All you would have to do is add water and nutrients, and the robot would do the rest.” Each robot now costs an estimated $2,500.