I've often wondered how long it will take to have smart enough robots for practical everyday chores.

The folks at MIT's artificial intelligence lab are making me believe that day may be sooner than I imagined.

Their robots are constructed from modified Roomba vacuum robots, which might not handle the real world gardens out there, but the concept has a lot of potential. They have a promising project that uses a swarm of robots working together to tend to an experimental tomato garden. I think a weed pulling robot could be very handy and fun to watch, but that day is most likely in the very distant future.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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