BEIJING: A Chinese proverb says, “The plan for a year lies in spring.”
Looking across the fertile countryside, regions everywhere are seizing on the agricultural season to carry out spring farming. With the advancement of science and technology, more and more new technologies are being applied in agricultural production, unveiling a scene of modern agricultural development across the vast fields of China.
With the Qingming Festival, also known as “Tomb-Sweeping Festival,” approaching, West Lake Longjing, known as one of China’s best green teas, has entered the large-scale picking period. In the tea gardens in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, tea farmers are busy picking, sorting, and collecting fresh tea leaves.
Alongside these tea farmers, three “iron tea-picking workers” work diligently. Their hands are flexible robotic arms and their eyes are movable cameras, while their heads are “hats” made of solar panels. These three “workers” are intelligent tea-picking robots created by the agricultural robotics and equipment innovation team at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University.
This year, the robots have been upgraded to the 6th generation.
Through continuous research and testing of technology such as artificial intelligence deep learning, depth camera positioning, and robotic arms, the new generation of robots has improved efficiency while reducing operating costs, the Zhejiang News reported.
The sixth-generation intelligent tea-picking robot has improved its work efficiency by 50 percent compared to the fifth generation. Capable of picking 0.75 kilograms of dry tea per day, it is estimated that one machine can replace 1.5 human labors, reducing costs by one-fourth.
However, compared to manual labor, a gap still exists when it comes to quality, meaning there is a long way to go before tea-picking robots can be widely promoted and popularized.
The application of BeiDou intelligent agricultural machinery is a strong guarantee for stabilizing and increasing grain production across the country.
To date, more than 2 million agricultural machines with BeiDou positioning operation terminals have been installed nationwide, including more than 150,000 plant protection drones, according to Science and Technology Daily.
“Installing the navigation system on agricultural machinery not only saves manpower but also land. Our work as drivers has become much easier than before, and the land plowed is straighter than the crooked planting before,” said a farmer using the system in Bole city, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Currently, cotton planting in Xinjiang region has entered the preparation stage, so machinery operators are busy testing and maintaining equipment, and attending technical training to get ready for sowing.
Next to the Three Gorges Reservoir in Central China’s Hubei Province, drones are working with humans to transport sweet navel oranges out of the mountains. –The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
