URBANA, Ill. — While robots in agriculture haven’t entirely lost their cool factor, they certainly aren’t the novelty they were even five to 10 years ago.

“They still have their appeal, but we wouldn’t care less if they didn’t solve a problem,” said Drew Schumacher, president of Rogo Ag, a company that deploys their autonomous robots to accurately take soil samples, allowing Midwest farmers to make better soil nutrient decisions.

You can’t get more enamored with the technology over the problem solving capabilities, said Schumacher, who helped create the SmartCore soil tester with fellow Purdue University College of Agriculture graduate Troy Fietcher. Continue Reading