New generation of smart, robotic farmers could help solve global food crisis

With the growth of the world's population showing no sign of slowing down, George Kantor of Carnegie Mellon University hopes robots can produce the food we need. Food and robotics are being intertwined in such a way now that our very future could depend on this partnership as our world heads towards a possible global population of just under 10bn by the year 2050, according to the UN. This, of course, means more food is needed and, based on our production and available arable land, this could prove to be an insurmountable problem with catastrophic consequences. One person hoping to use robotics to solve that problem is George Kantor, a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where he leads projects that bring research ideas from multiple disciplines to develop new robotic systems that solve interesting, practical problems. After receiving his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, he moved to CMU as a postdoctoral student.