Vertical farms Is the sky really the limit?
At a hyper-controlled indoor farm in industrial South San Francisco, four robots named John, Paul, George and Ringo carefully transfer seedlings from barcoded trays into 4.5-metre towers that are then hung vertically inside a 445 sq metre grow room.
Inside the hygienic space, which is operated by the indoor farming company Plenty, there’s no soil, sunlight or tractors, but rows of hanging crops illuminated by colourful LEDs and carefully monitored by cameras, sensors and artificial intelligence. Once a tower is ready to be harvested, a balletic automated process reminiscent of a dry cleaner’s conveyor belt begins.
A robot named Garfunkel (a nearby counterpart is called Simon) gently grabs and turns the tower on its side before setting it down to
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