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The Hands-Free Hectare
In a soggy Shropshire field on the edge of the Harper Adams University campus an amazing experiment is just beginning.
If they pull this off, this small team will be the first in the world to manage such a feat.
But it is not going to be easy.
People are forbidden
I was there as they started the project and brought robots to the field for the very first time.
The ground rules are simple.
There's a hectare of land which will be fenced off and only robots and machines will be allowed inside with the odd drone flying overhead.
People are completely forbidden - hence the project nickname, "The hands free hectare".
In his 1966 story At the Bottom of a Hole, sf writer Larry Niven describes a self-guided tractor in a somewhat more extreme robot farm - in orbit!
Via BBC.
Can you plant, grow and harvest a hectare of spring barley using only robots?
Five miles above the sunlight tube, the sky was a patchwork of small squares, split by a central wedding ring of lake and by tributary rivers, a sky alive with the tiny red glints of self-guided tractors.
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