https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UwrXj4as6LA&t=18
It's very cool. The machine is basically a very big overhead scanner that slowly moves over hills.
Seems that this design is pretty much applicable to other crops (such as potatoes...) as well.
- Consistent lighting is crucial for the most efficient AI. Full overhead enclosure makes this way easier
- Gantry style robot is MUCH lighter and easier to repair than both a 6-axis arm or even a delta robot. It's also likely an order of magnitude cheaper than other options
- Gantry robot also makes it pretty modular if they need to modify for different crop widths
Also, robot arms can be a quite expensive way of doing things; I saw a prototype that used tethered drones (like the common quadcopters, but power and data comes over a cable) to manipulate things as apparently it was like 10 times cheaper than a robot arm capable of reaching the same distances and transporting the same weight payload.
It also needs lots of lighting (https://youtube.com/watch?v=9H_JUvXyL74)
That roof also may protect the electronics better from rain.
Finally, I can’t find details on https://h2lrobotics.com/?page_id=254&lang=en but I doubt it is “the camera”. There probably is more than one.
It sounds like a gasoline engine? That seems an interesting choice.
Downsides is of course pollution etc, even if diesel engines have gotten a lot cleaner over the years.
We eat that. (and thus need to wash it, to mitigate that)
It's really not that much. A combine harvester uses about 15 gallons / hour of fuel and harvests ~450,000 pounds of corn per hour ie more than a lifetimes supply of food. Various other equipment gets used but it's all trivial in comparison to what's directly sprayed on crops.
Meanwhile your directly exposed to all the car fumes around you on a daily basis. Also, tulips aren't a food crop.
If the device was solar instead of diesel, that wouldn't move the needle on the dirtiness of the crops. Even the pollution from wear&tear on tires and brakes is more relevant than fuel - we worry about fossil fuels due to the global effect of greenhouse gas emissions, we also care about people breathing in small particles from diesel exhaust, but it doesn't really harm food in farms.
And the same design would likely work with a battery at some point in the future. But currently diesel is standard on the fields.