SAN CARLOS, Calif. (AP) – Brandon Alexander would like to introduce you to Angus, the farmer of the future.
He’s heavyset, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pounds, not to mention a bit slow. But he’s strong enough to hoist 800-pound pallets of maturing vegetables and can move them from place to place on his own.
Of course, Angus is a robot. Even if he looks more like a large tanning bed on wheels than C-3PO.
Alexander’s startup, Iron Ox, aims to feed people with produce grown from the hands of robots at indoor nurseries near cities. The idea is to deliver vegetables and fruits to restaurants and supermarkets more quickly than is now possible.
But other automated indoor farms haven’t panned out, including one tried by Google, where Alexander worked before he started Iron Ox.
