The Salad Days of AI

Students Create Digital Green Thumbs to Nurture Vegetables in Automated Greenhouses

Nidhi Jain has never had much luck growing plants.

“I’ve tried to work with plants, but they didn’t want to work with me,” said the senior computer science major from California. “So I’ve stuck to succulents.”

Green thumb or no, last fall Jain and her classmates in the School of Computer Science’s Autonomous Agents course applied their knowledge of artificial intelligence, including machine learning and computer vision, to grow lettuces and radishes in small, automated greenhouses. Without ever seeing or touching their plants in person, they worked in groups of three to nurture their sprouts, writing programs that made all of the decisions on adjusting light, humidity and soil moisture based on sensor data.

Reid Simmons, who teaches the course with Stephanie Rosenthal, said using AI to grow vegetables is a good way for students to put into practice the knowledge of AI-based autonomous agents that they learned in class. Agents have applications in many areas, such as self-driving cars, intelligent factories and smart homes.

Automated greenhouses proved a good match to the need for a course exercise.