Ever watched an hamster inside an exercise ball and thought, "wow, that could innovate farming?" No, well Spanish
researchers have .
While facing a problem of how to monitor soil moisture levels in arable farms, Spanish scientists turned to the
hamster for inspiration, it's not the rodent's cute face or love of packing their cheek pouches that have cast an allure.
No, it's not their love of exercise balls that caught the scientists attention.
Specifically, the Robotics and Cybernetics Research Group from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid became
intrigued by how hamsters shift their weight to get their spherical exercise device in motion, and how it allows them
to turn corners with ease.
It is precisely this idea that scientists have incorporated to make Rosphere, which they categorise as "A robot without
wheels or legs which has a simple spherical form that, literally, scrolls by itself to conduct the missions (while)
being inherently stable."
The Rosphere mechanism works in a similar way to how hamsters move while in exercise balls.
Researchers first employed the robot to measure, in situ, the environmental variables surrounding rows of crops.
They confirmed Rosphere's shape is particularly well suited to rolling between rows of crops to monitor farming
conditions like soil moisture and composition. The potential benefits of this could be vast because it would allow
precision environmental monitoring across large distances in a way that was previously unfeasible.
The creators of Rosphere hope that eventually it will be able to take on more sophisticated condition analysis tasks
and will be able to tell farmers when best to water, feed and tend to their crops.
Rosphere has also been tried out in a number of other environments and shared spaces in order to, and this is where
the release from the university gets a bit ominous, "verify that this robot can safely interact without being a threat
to people."
Rosphere could also be a cheap solution that would innovate moisture regulation and make this small but quite
technical aspect of farming that much easier.