"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..." - Hallo friendsINFO TODAY, In the article you read this time with the title "Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants...", We have prepared this article for you to read and retrieve information therein. Hopefully the contents of postings Article economy, Article health, Article hobby, Article News, Article politics, Article sports, We write this you can understand. Alright, good read.

Title : "Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."
link : "Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."

"Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."

"... and shooting them with deadly, high-precision squirts of herbicide... Pesticides and other chemicals are traditionally applied blindly across a whole field or crop. Blue River’s systems are agricultural sharp shooters that direct chemicals only where they are needed. The startup’s robots are towed behind a regular tractor like conventional spraying equipment. But they have cameras on board that use machine-learning software to distinguish between crops and weeds, and automated sprayers to target unwanted plants." (Wired).

I think technology like this is great, but I don't know why the word "robot" is used... other than to try to make us like it more. It's just a machine. When is a machine a robot?

Here's an answer to that question at Quora:

• Machine can be defined as an apparatus used to perform a particular task.
• Most machines are not autonomous. Meaning they can't take decisions or they can't be left without inspecting or assisting them.
• A Machine can be termed as a Robot, if it is autonomous and if it agrees with the three laws stated by Isaac Asimov - Father of Robotics
• Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
• Some machines are Robots.

For example an electric screw driver is a machine, it is not autonomous. If collaborated with a robotic arm, it may be autonomous and hence can be termed as a Robot.

Is the Blue River autonomous? It's an attachment that must dragged behind a tractor. But it does seem to be making decisions on its own.

I'd like to think that "robot" was limited to a machine that resembles a human being. Wikipedia briefly acknowledges my romanticism:

A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer— capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to take on human form but most robots are machines designed to perform a task with no regard to how they look.

The Oxford English Dictionary separates the meanings, with one being "An intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal" (and restricted with "Chiefly Science Fiction") and the other "A machine capable of automatically carrying out a complex series of movements, esp. one which is programmable." Both meanings go back to the 1920s. There's also the figurative meaning, "A person who acts mechanically or without emotion," and that too goes back to the 20s, e.g., "Mr. G. Bernard Shaw defined Robots as persons all of whose activities were imposed on them" (1923).

It's interesting that today I think of the word "robot" as working to give us a friendly attitude toward a machine, but back then, the word was used to express negativity toward human beings.

Here's a line from a poem by D.H. Lawrence: "The mechanical impulse for money and motor-cars which rules the robot-classes and the robot-masses, now."

Thus Article "Tractor giant John Deere just spent $305 million to acquire a startup that makes robots capable of identifying unwanted plants..."

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