Artificial Intelligence can Grow a Lettuce Crop Autonomously

The five international teams participating in the final rounds of the 3rd Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge have completed the first try-out experiment. The teams tested their algorithms and gained experience during a first crop cycle with lettuce. The goal of the 3rd Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge is to grow lettuces in two crop cycli fully autonomously with an AI algorithm on a cloud platform with good quality and little resource and energy use and without any human interference in the experimental greenhouses of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in Bleiswijk. The first crop cycle of the 3rd Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge started on February 2nd with the planting of cultivar Salanova. Five teams (Team CVA, Team digital_cucumber, Team MondayLettuce, Team VeggieMight, Team Koala) participated in the first try-out experiment to test their algorithms and gain experience.