Gentle Robot Gripper gives the plant leaves a “blow” of sensors and genes for intelligent agriculture

The tools that offer an early and precise overview of plant health – and allow interventions of individual plants – a key to increasing crop yields, because environmental pressures are increasingly impacting horticulture and agriculture.

In response to this challenge, Cornell researchers have developed a gentle robotic device that gently seizes and injects living plant leaves with sensors that help it detect and communicate with its environment. The robot can also inject genetic equipment that could be used for bio-engineering plants in the future.

The device allows safe and reproducible delivery of sensors and genetic equipment in a reliable and safety of plants – an essential step in precision, data -based agriculture. The team’s conclusions are published in Scientific robotics.

“Plants, like people, have different answers to the environment, and precision agriculture is an effort to get closer to the intervention at the unique level – and the soil around it,” said the main author of the newspaper, Robert F. Shepherd, professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell Engineering and a search for cropps.

Horticulturalists, farmers and farmers face increasing pressures of environmental impacts, such as drought and streaming of fertilizers. By setting up sensors in the leaves, researchers can monitor the impact of drought or a fertilizer overdose on the plant.

To demonstrate, the team used the pliers to deliver two types of probes. The first, Aquadust, is a tiny particle of gel which fluoresce in response to water stress, allowing researchers to monitor the hydration levels of a plant in a non -invasive manner. The second probe, Ruby, is a biological reporter coded by the gene which reveals red pigmentation where genetic transformation occurs in the plant.

“Aquadust allowed us to” see “the water stress inside a sheet, and likewise, by injecting a bacteria which transforms the injection region with genes of Ruby Reporter, we have to see ” that this partial leaf experienced a genetic transformation,” said the first author Mehmet Mehmet Ireman, previously a postdoctoral researcher A professional turkey.

“It was fascinating to be able to transform robotically the local genetics of the vegetable sheet, then to see it again,” he said.

The researchers tested the device on sunflower and cotton leaves – plants known for their structural resistance to infiltration. The pliers has experienced more than 91% success in delivery while causing much less damage than methods based on the syringe and widening the effective infiltration area of ​​more than 12 times.

The gentle robotic system works with hands, provides materials more uniformly and causes little or no damage, even in difficult and durable species such as cotton. The technique is an improvement in relation to traditional manual methods such as vacuum infiltration, which uses low air pressure to force liquids in plant tissues, or needle injections, which can injure the leaves, are at high intensity of labor and often fail in difficult types of plants. This is particularly important for horticultural crops – Mobile skin plants cultivated for their fruits, vegetables, flowers or ornamental value.

The device applies a soft and uniform pressure through a sponge tip which contains nanoparticles or genetic probes. The design of the flexible material and the actuator (the part of a machine that produces strength or torque) has been optimized via simulation software and 3D printing, allowing the pliers to operate with a variety of types of sheets and shapes.

“Its low rigidity allows it to deform the shape of the flu to adapt to the orientation and the surface of the sheet with few implications for health with the leaf,” said Shepherd. “The form of the extension actuator has enabled a large movement and the capacity to adjust the orientation without bulky or complex engine control.”

Research lays the basics of little invasive plant monitoring in real time, said Shepherd.

“Sweet pliers to inject physical or organic probes unlock new and incredible capacities,” he said. “The immediate use of our system would probably be in the greenhouses, where a robot would constantly inject and monitor individual plants to deduce the amount of water they need.”

In the long term, similar pliers could be used to deliver or recover other diagnostic materials, including sensors for the absorption of nitrogen, the presence of the disease or even metabolic changes in real time, the opening of new possibilities for intelligent agriculture and research on plants.

“New nanoparticles will also be created that will inform us of many other aspects of plant health,” said Shepherd. “With this information, the plants will give more and we will waste less.”

The team now explores the integration of the pliers into the robotic arms for automated greenhouse systems, with the long-term goal of adapting it to the platforms deployable on the ground.

“Once the greenhouses are translated, the implications will be greater,” said Shepherd. “I am particularly interested in limiting waste flows in lakes to avoid harmful algae flowers.”

Co-authors include researchers from Boyce Thompson Institute, Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and School of Integrative Plant Science of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.