Solar farms meet farming as AI robots work beneath the panels

Solar farms meet farming as AI robots work beneath the panels

A pear orchard in the Netherlands is offering a glimpse of what farming could look like in the future: fruit trees growing beneath solar panels while an autonomous robot travels between them, using cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor the crop. The experimental site in Randwijk combines two emerging technologies. The first is agrivoltaics, also known as agri-photovoltaics or agri-PV, in which the same land is used for agriculture …