Agricultural Robotics (IoT4Ag)

By 2050, the US population is estimated to grow to 400 million and the world population to 9.7 billion. Current agricultural practices account for 70% of global water use, energy accounts for one of the largest costs on a farm, and inefficient use of agrochemicals is altering Earth’s ecosystems. With finite arable land, water, and energy resources, ensuring food, energy, and water security will require new technologies to improve the efficiency of food production, create sustainable approaches to supply energy, and prevent water scarcity.

An Engineering Research Center on the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag) has recently been established to ensure food, energy, and water security by advancing technology to increase crop production, while minimizing the use of energy and water resources and the impact of agricultural practices on the environment.  The center will create novel, integrated systems that capture the microclimate and spatially, temporally, and compositionally map heterogeneous stresses for early detection and intervention to better outcomes in agricultural crop production. The Center will create internet of things (IoT) technologies to optimize practices for every plant; from sensors, robotics, and energy and communication devices to data-driven models constrained by plant physiology, soil, weather, management practices, and socio-economics.  

MSRAL researchers are working on the design and control of teams of UAVs and UGVs for agricultural mapping, sensing, and physical interventions.