FIRA USA 2024, the international forum on agricultural robotics, will be held from October 22 – 24 in Woodland, California. This event will showcase cutting-edge AI-based AgTech robotics equipment, underscoring how AI is transforming farming at a time when the industry faces unprecedented challenges. Shrinking labor forces, rising input costs, soil degradation from over-tilling, and continued reliance on herbicides and fertilizers are just a few of the major hurdles farmers must overcome. AI’s profound role in agriculture has led to its designation as the enabling technology behind the Fourth Agricultural Revolution.
Current Limitations of GPU-Based AgTech Robotics
Today, AgTech robotic equipment often rely on GPUs for AI functionality. First introduced in 1999 to enhance PC gaming, the GPU has celebrated 25 years of service. However, despite its widespread adoption, the GP’s original purpose – processing graphics for gaming – means it was never intended for the stringent demands of modern AI applications, especially in embedded and edge environments like agriculture. High AI performance, low latency, and energy efficiency—crucial for AgTech—are not inherent strengths of this aging technology.
GPUs have proven the potential effectiveness of AI in agriculture , however, their performance, power consumption, and latency limitations restrict the full potential of robotic equipment. For example, some robotic weeders use up to 24 GPUs, achieving weeding speeds of just 1-2 mph. Simple calculations reveal that it could take 10-20 days of continuous operation to weed an average-sized U.S. farm. After such a prolonged weeding, new weeds would already have sprouted, forcing the weeder to start over—highlighting the impracticality of GPU-based systems for large-scale farming.
Although laser-based weeding offers benefits like reducing soil burnout and labor costs, the slow, expensive, and power-hungry nature of the GPU-based equipment makes it cost-prohibitive. The high upfront costs and long payback periods will push farmers to continue to rely on herbicides, exacerbating soil degradation.
Untether AI: The Right Tool for AgTech Robotics
As every farmer knows, using the right tool for the job is critical. Untether AI’s speedAI® family of products, built on an energy-centric at-memory compute architecture, is designed specifically for AI acceleration at the edge—making it the perfect fit for AgTech robotics equipment. Independent benchmarks from MLCommons® demonstrate the substantial advantages of Untether AI accelerators over traditional GPUs.
A single speedAI240 device can replace the 24 GPUs currently used in some AgTech robotic weeders. In fact, it offers enough performance to add the equivalent of another 32 GPUs beyond those 24. Even more impressively, this performance comes with less than one-tenth of the power consumption of those 24 GPUs and far lower latency.
Implications for the Agriculture Industry
The impact of Untether AI’s edge-optimized accelerators on agriculture is transformative:
- Lower costs: Reduced equipment costs and shorter payback periods make AgTech robotics equipment practical.
- Eliminates labor shortages: Automating tasks like weeding frees farmers from needing to address workforce shortages .
- Improved efficiency: More weeds can be removed faster and with greater accuracy, even targeting small, immature weeds.
- Healthier crops: Efficient weeding reduces water use and nutrient depletion, leading to healthier, larger yields.
- Sustainability: Reduced reliance on herbicides prevents soil burnout and promotes sustainable farming.
- Versatility: Untether AI can also power additional tasks like soil analysis and crop monitoring.
- Energy savings: Increased energy efficiency reduces fuel consumption or battery use, lowering input costs.
- Simplicity and reliability: A simpler system translates to easier maintenance and higher reliability.
- Empowering small farmers: Affordable, efficient robotics reinvigorate the small farming sector.
Join Us at FIRA USA
Visit us at FIRA USA, booth D9, to learn how Untether AI’s technology is revolutionizing AgTech and transforming farming practices. For more insights, download our white paper, and stay tuned for updates as we lead the way in the Fourth Agricultural Revolution.