Autonomous corn robot monitors and samples crops that humans can’t reach

Filed in by on October 9, 2024 • views: 25

2024-10-09 22:35:10

Imagine you’re a farmer who has to monitor miles of corn rows. Not only is it repetitive and time-intensive, but the rows are too narrow to walk in. Perfect job for an autonomous robot! Purdue University researchers have created a small autonomous robot to help farmers monitor crops and regularly collect physical samples, saving them time and effort.

Internet-of-Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag), an NSF engineering research center, was launched in 2020 with five participating universities: Purdue University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Merced, University of Florida, and Arizona State University. Purdue’s Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE) is one of three real-world testbeds, and the only one that focuses on row crops such as corn and sorghum plants. Aarya Deb, PhD student in mechanical engineering at Purdue said, “IoT4Ag’s mission is to utilize internet-of-things technologies to digitize the agriculture industry in order to meet the growing demand for food, energy, and water security as the population grows.”

Deb works alongside Kitae Kim, another PhD student in mechanical engineering, at Purdue’s Herrick Labs. They both work under the supervision of David Cappelleri, professor of mechanical engineering and assistant vice president for research innovation. Together, they’ve developed an agricultural robot dubbed the Purdue AgBot (P-AgBot) that can be used for in-row and under-canopy crop monitoring and physical sampling. More info here.

 


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