PepsiCo uses artificial intelligence technology to grow potatoes and innovates peeling algorithms.

Pepsi is using AI to grow potatoes.

You heard it right! It's the parent company of the Coke brand.

In a vast farmland, Pepsi sensors are analyzing local weather data, potato growth and other data.

Then, the ML algorithm is used to obtain recommendations such as sowing depth, watering amount, and fertilizer amount, and provide them to local farmers.

△ Source: potatonewstoday

This is not just a show.

Pepsi has promoted this strategy to North America, South America, and Europe, providing farmers everywhere with more than one million key data suggestions.

So, why did Pepsi do this?

Look down.

You are a person who made your fortune from cola, how can you grow potatoes?

Pepsi uses AI to grow potatoes, and the most typical country is Mexico.

The local area is suffering from drought and water shortage, but nearly 80% of the water is used in agriculture, but a large amount of potatoes must be supplied to American customers.

PepsiCo is working with a team called CropX to place sensors in potato fields to monitor weather conditions during the planting cycle, and then combine them with their trained algorithms to guide farmers to control drip irrigation and pivot irrigation. amount of water.

In addition to watering, the system also provides farmers with more suggestions, including sowing depth, fertilizer amount, how to protect crops at specific nodes, etc...

According to the control group in the early stages of the project In experiments, they also confirmed that after applying the above technology, not only the water and fertilizer materials were reduced by 15%, but the yield increased.

△ Source: potatoesnewstoday

As for why you help people grow potatoes?

The official statement is - reduce carbon emissions and achieve efficient and sustainable development.

But the root cause is of course not that simple.

PepsiCo not only produces Coke, but is also the world's top potato-processed food manufacturer. It owns a series of puffed food brands such as Lay's potato chips, Cheetos, and Duo Le Crisps.

Because of its control of the downstream, PepsiCo has strong control over the potato supply chain. They can promote irrigation technology and control seed varieties. In 2019, several Indian farmers secretly used Lay's Potato Chips' "special" potato varieties and were sued by the company, demanding each of them pay 1.05 million rupees.

Implementing AI technology in potato cultivation can not only obtain higher-quality raw materials, but also help farmers save money and improve planting efficiency, further integrate their own supply chain, and gain a good reputation.

For Pepsi, of course, it’s a fish-out-of-water situation.

Not only uses AI to grow potatoes

If you look through the public information, you can see that PepsiCo has applied AI to all aspects.

Continue to talk about potatoes.

They have a set of visual algorithms that can observe the potato peeling process and input the percentage of peeling to the whole potato. After training, this algorithm can calculate a set of optimal peeling methods and thickness, optimizing Peeling process.

Its in-house engineers estimate that this AI application can save the company more than $1 million per year just by deploying it in the United States.

△ Source: potatopro.com

AI is also used to check the quality of potatoes. In the Pepsi potato chip factory, they applied a machine vision system using cameras as sensors to calculate the size, weight and quantity of potatoes.

This can save weighing equipment. After all, the price of a weighing component on each assembly line is as high as 300,000 US dollars. It can also be used as the basis data to evaluate the material flow and flow rate on the production line. Productivity.

What’s more interesting is that they also irradiate potato chips with lasers and rely on reflected waves to detect the internal texture and quality.

AI technology is also used in many aspects such as the production of puffed food and beverages such as Cheetos, and factory safety compliance inspection and protection.

AI is also used in the sales process. PepsiCo has a cloud-based data collection and analysis platform called Pep Worx that provides advice on inventory, retail, promotions, etc.

For example, when a company wants to launch an oatmeal product, it can identify 24 million target consumer households out of 110 million American households. According to the data it claims, the analytics platform drove 80% of sales growth 12 months after its launch.

Even autonomous driving is used by PepsiCo.

They have an unmanned delivery vehicle called Snack-Bot. This six-wheeled self-driving delivery vehicle can travel 20 miles on a single charge and can travel at night when it rains.

Functionally, it mainly provides snacks and drinks under the brand to college students. When students place an order through the APP, it will deliver the goods to the designated distribution point without any delivery fees.

In addition to PepsiCo, other food giants are also applying AI.

Pepsi's rival, Coca-Cola, has been trying to feed the full-link data of 60 vending machines to the AI ​​algorithm since 2014, allowing it to generate distribution recommendations. Its transaction volume increased by 15%, and the number of replenishments increased by 15%. Instead, it was 18% less.

In addition, they also use CNN technology to achieve higher-precision OCR. When consumers redeem for another bottle, it can be completed online, and they no longer have to deal with the canteen owner.

In addition to the giants, a team called Tomra has built a French fries analysis machine that can determine whether the length of French fries meets the requirements on the production line (such as 3 -4 inches), and separate products that do not meet the requirements:

Finally, do you know what other AI technologies have been implemented in the food and beverage field?

Reference link:

[1]https://venturebeat.com/ai/2023-will-be-year-of-hope-and-focus-for-ai-says- pepsico-transformation-leader/

[2]https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/pepsico-chooses-cropx-to-achieve-global-sustainability-goals-301362544.html

[3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/04/05/the-fascinating-ways-pepsico-uses-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-to -deliver-success/?sh=cd1fea2311ef

[4]https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/artificial-intelligence-at-coca-cola/

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