Look what’s tip toeing through the tulips!
It’s boxy and costs the same as a sports car. Yet tulip farmers across the Netherlands would rather spend $200,000 on a new high-tech AI robot named Theo developed to root out sick tulip bulbs that can compromise the famous patchwork quilts of color.
Named after a retired employee of a well-known tulip farm, there are 45 “Theos” patrolling rows of yellow and red “goudstuk” tulips fields day and night looking for the telltale red stripes that form on the leaves of virus-infected plants. The disease weakens the bulb, stunts the growth and produces smaller flowers. Eventually the bulbs stop blooming altogether.
The “rolling robots” on caterpillar tracks move slowly through tulip fields checking each plant at one-half mile per hour. Manufactured by H2L Robotics, Theos are outfitted with front-end cameras that take thousands of tulip pictures. An AI model determines whether or not the plant is sick and GPS coordinates identify bulbs that need to be destroyed once they are harvested and sorted in a warehouse.
Described as precision agriculture, the heart of the machine’s AI knowledge is based on information provided by the tulip farmers. According to a third-generation tulip farmer, fewer people called “sickness spotters” can identify infected tulips or consistently do the back-breaking work as well as robots. Good job, Theo!