Simon Blackmore talks about farming with robots for precision agriculture in an SPIE Newsroom video interview [6:58]. Ten to 15 years ago, farmers used to laugh when Simon Blackmore and his colleagues talked about deploying robotics for such chores as weeding, protecting crops from disease or pests, or selecting harvest-ready vegetables — all while helping to cut costs and limit chemical and other impacts on the soil. Now, he said in an SPIE Newsroom video interview posted last week , they’re asking questions about how robotics and other photonics-enabled technologies can help save energy and money, minimize soil damage, and improve crop yield. Blackmore, who is Head of Engineering at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, director of the UK National Centre for Precision Farming (NCPF), and project manager of FutureFarm, also shared his ideas in a new conference at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing in April on technologies with applications in precision agriculture . ...