Artificial intelligence for growing vegetables

Within five years, astronauts will be able to grow vegetables in space thanks to artificial intelligence developed by Australian scientists.

As NASA projects human exploration of the Moon by 2024, the ability to grow edible plants will be vital to the next stages of space exploration.

In anticipation of this new age in space, scientists at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) are working to develop an artificial intelligence that astronauts can use. They grow their own fresh food.

New artificial intelligence to detect plant stress

Concretely, the Australian scientists’ goal is to develop an artificial intelligence system capable of detecting early stress Plants grown on space flights.

“We take technologies that we developed ourselves in large-scale farming systems, using artificial vision “Monitoring culture, determining its behavior in space, and providing these observations to an astronaut in order to simplify their management,” explained Professor Craig Bailey of the University of Southern Queensland.

NASA plans to install a file station on the moon during the current decade. A station that will serve as a home base for astronauts who will travel to other planets.

Successfully growing vegetables in space

Vegetable cultivation is The best choice To feed astronauts traveling in space, as other technologies, such as 3D printing of food, are not yet viable.

Sheryl McCarthy, an engineer at USQ, emphasized that developing an artificial intelligence program is essential for proper nutrition during spaceflight.

“We’ve seen pictures of plants in space before NASA collected them,” Dr. McCarthy noted. “They still look like plants, but Keep sweating and dying ».

Thus, the artificial intelligence developed by the Australians makes it possible to detect stresses on plants much earlier. Hence, from Timely adjustment their environment. What should help them save your life Even in the perilous conditions of space.

An artificial intelligence robot that will be operational within five years

” we hope that Our robot will go to the moon in the next five years, but this will depend on the NASA calendar and availability of launch ships,” the Australian team reported.

“The first step is to have a screen that tells you something is wrong (in the plants, editor’s note) and you can correct it. Later there will be full automation where the AI ​​will take care of the problem for you.”