Robotics & Automation News

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phenotyping

DNA Paints a Literal Picture of Your Face

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Two women in their 70s were sexually assaulted and killed in 2006. Police found the DNA of a suspect at the crime scene, but without a person to link it to, what use is DNA?

Much more than most ever could have imagined, it turns out, thanks to the improving sciences of DNA phenotyping and genetic genealogy.

Virtually every physical attribute a human has – ancestry, skin color, eye color, freckles, dimples, face shape, and much more – is encoded in DNA. [Read more…] about DNA Paints a Literal Picture of Your Face

Truly gigantic farm robot as big as a football field being tested in Arizona desert

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A colossally humungous robot that looks at least as big as a football field has been unveiled by a group of scientists who clearly understand scale. (See video below.)

Called the “Field Scanalyzer”, shown in dazzling pictures and video on the Wall Street Journal website, the totally titanic machine is described as “an automated robotic field phenotyping platform for detailed crop monitoring”.

Phenotyping is the process of predicting a crop’s phenotype – the observable physical properties of an organism – using only genetic information collected from genotyping or DNA sequencing. [Read more…] about Truly gigantic farm robot as big as a football field being tested in Arizona desert

Raspberry Pi could help farmers manage crops better and more cheaply than current systems, say scientists

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Raspberry Pi may be strongly associated with hobbyists, but now it’s been recruited as a farm hand. 

Inventors of the credit-card sized computers have shipped more than 5 million units at less than $50 each since launch in 2012. Most of them have found their way into toy cars and other devices.

But now a team of researchers has integrated Raspberry Pi into what’s called an “automated field phenomics” system, or what could be thought of as a sophisticated scarecrow. And the team claims their system will cost a fraction of the phenotyping solutions currently on the market.  [Read more…] about Raspberry Pi could help farmers manage crops better and more cheaply than current systems, say scientists