To many in agriculture, Xiong Weihua's career path once seemed unfocused, and some even joked he was "not doing his proper job". However, this vegetable science graduate from Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) has now led his team to develop an AI-powered irrigation robot and a standardized crop-planting system.

After graduating in 2002, Xiong explored various areas in agriculture, including seed sales, farm management, and supply chains. His turning point was when he attempted to expand farming operations and realized that imported equipment didn't suit China's diverse growing conditions and lacked access to essential data.

"We couldn't even access our own production data," he recalled. "So we had to build our own system."

Xiong's team gathered crop growth data from 17 domestic farms in different climate zones and used it to train AI models. This led to the creation of an irrigation robot named Jojo, which analyzes large amounts of environmental and crop data in real time to manage water and nutrient supply.

Unlike traditional systems, Jojo continuously learns from feedback and adjusts irrigation strategies, allowing crops to grow in optimal conditions.

Field tests comparing the system with imported equipment over several years demonstrated similar stability and accuracy but at a lower cost and with more flexibility.

The technology has now entered mass production and has been adopted in multiple regions in China. This development brings more high-quality, high-yield, and environmentally friendly agricultural products to the market.

Xiong suggests that AI has the potential to manage much of farm operations, improving efficiency and helping to solve labor shortages in agriculture.

The irrigation robot, Jojo, developed and operated by Xiong's company Bombus, works on a farmland in Anji county. [Photo/news.hzau.edu.cn]