The latest moonshot to come from Google is an experiment in using agricultural robotics to inspect crops and collect data, all in an effort to "transform how food is grown."
Called Mineral, the project from the division of Alphabet Inc.-owned Google that uses just one letter as its name — X — is a robot designed to roam over crops and collect data that will help farmers, breeders, agronomists, and scientists. The project was unveiled Monday with a blog post and the launch of a new site.
The robot has so far conducted tests on soybean fields in Illinois and strawberry fields in California, Alphabet said.
"Just as the microscope led to a transformation in how diseases are detected and managed, we hope that better tools will enable the agriculture industry to transform how food is grown," Elliott Grant, the leader of the Mineral project, wrote in the blog post.
Here's more from Grant:
Our project started with the insight that in order to grow food sustainably on a global scale, new tools will be needed to manage the staggering complexity of farming. Alongside experts in the field — literally and figuratively — we’ve been developing and testing a range of software and hardware prototypes based on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, simulation, sensors, robotics and more. From strawberry fields in California to soybean fields in Illinois, we’ve been learning about crops from sprout to harvest, so we can find new ways to help breeders and growers understand how plants grow and interact with their environment.
These experiments, adventures and failures prompted us to ask a lot of "what if" questions: What if every single plant could be monitored and given exactly the nutrition it needed? What if we could untangle the genetic and environmental drivers of crop yield? What if we could measure the subtle ways a plant responds to its environment? What if we could match a crop variety to a parcel of land for optimum sustainability? We knew we couldn’t ask and answer every question — and thanks to our partners, we haven’t needed to. Breeders and growers around the world have worked with us to run experiments to find new ways to understand the plant world.
New technology for agriculture, a.k.a. agtech, has been a growing area for entrepreneurs and investors. According to Crunchbase News, venture capitalists have invested $4 billion in agtech startups in both 2018 and 2019 and it projects that investments in 2020 will either match or exceed that level.
And while agtech technology and Google's Mineral are being developed in Silicon Valley, this region also could be a major customer for such tools. Agriculture remains a major industry in the region, especially in the Salinas Valley where lettuce, strawberries, artichokes and other produce is grown.
