Robots can do a lot. They build cars in factories. Robotic dogs can, allegedly and a little creepily, make us safer by patrolling our streets. But there are some things robots still cannot do – things that sound quite basic in comparison. "It's a simple thing" for humans, says robotics researcher Joe Davidson.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the world is going hungry. WHO data shows that in 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, 820 million people lacked enough food to eat, an increase of nine million people over the year before. Hunger kills plenty of people worldwide. It also impacts those who survive, causing serious childhood development issues like stunting, where children are too short for their age, and wasting, where they're too thin for their age. The explosion in our planet's population is a major factor in there not being enough food to go around.

The new institute is one of 11 launched by the National Science Foundation and among two funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture in 2021. It's called the AgAID Institute, which is short for USDA-NIFA Institute for Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support. While traditional AI development involves scientists making tools and delivering them to end-users, the AgAID Institute will involve the people who will use the AI solutions--from farmers and workers to policy makers--in their development, said Ananth Kalyanaraman, a WSU computer science professor and the lead principal investigator for the Institute. "People are very much part of the agricultural ecosystem. Humans manipulate crops on a daily basis and make complex decisions, such as how to allocate water or mitigate the effects of an incoming storm," said Kalyanaraman, who also holds the Boeing Chair in WSU's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.