II: Broccoli
Here comes the RoboVeg.
Good morning. Today is duodi, the 12th of Pluviôse, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le brocoli, a champion vegetable for anyone needing iron in their diet.
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If you're eating broccoli in the winter or spring and you live in the eastern half of the United States, you're probably eating Packman broccoli, a cultivar that was part of the explosion fast-growing broccoli hybrids developed about 50 years ago. And if you're snickering about the name ... well, I can't absolutely verify that it was named after the video game character, but it was first introduced in the United States in CXCI (1983), in the depths of the Pac-Man craze, so...
When people think about the possibilities of computer vision, they mainly call to mind the more urban dystopian applications: facial recognition cameras used at protests, untrustworthy "self-driving" cars, and the like. But some of the biggest strides are being made out on the farm, where computer vision is the final key to unlocking automated harvesting of the few remaining fruits and vegetables that a dumb machine can't grab.
