iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Engineers from the University of Cambridge have developed a vegetable-picking robot that can autonomously identify and harvest iceberg lettuce, one of the more manually demanding crops for human pickers. Vegebot was trained using a machine-learning algorithm that helped it distinguish healthy lettuces ready for harvest, in a variety of different weather conditions.

Gather ‘round! Let me tell you the story of Droney Appleseed.

You see, in the 21st century, bee populations were dying off because everyone was using too many toxic pesticides. Farmers were starting to notice that the fuzzy little workers were starting to vanish because their crops weren’t getting pollinated. Boy, was everyone in a real pickle then! Thankfully, Droney Appleseed came to the rescue, flying over the farmland and spraying pollen wherever it went.

OK, so, we’re probably not ready to make children’s books about this stuff quite yet. But! An apple orchard was just pollinated by a drone for the first time.