Automation Gains Momentum in Agriculture
By Anya Rehon
With a rising global population, the demand for sustainable food production continues to steadily increase, requiring more efficient practices in the agricultural industry to meet these growing challenges. Agricultural robots play an essential role in meeting the increased demand and students in the BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department are at the forefront of research that seeks the use of advanced technological systems to produce more food efficiently.
With guidance from Associate Professor Bo Liu, seven students enrolled in his agricultural robotics and automation course during spring quarter collaborated to customize a base Amiga robot purchased from Farm-ng, a robotics company in Watsonville, California, into a working automated lettuce harvester. The students were split into two teams — one that worked on the build and the other that worked on software testing — and programmed the robot to move through the field and harvest lettuce.
Students working on the project had some creative liberties when they started the design and were able to customize several features such as the hardware and various capabilities like weeding, mowing and spraying. “These robots have the brains to do a lot of different things,” said Wyatt Ward, a recent bioresource and agricultural engineering graduate who assisted with fabrication of the robot. “The main purpose of this robot right now is GPS driving, or autonomous driving. The machine has cameras so that you can use it to follow a person around the field.”
Through a process of trial and error during the 10-week class, students succeeded in building the robot to move autonomously through each field row but weren’t able to perfect it to thoroughly cut lettuce. Ward says more fabrication is needed to make the robot work more precisely and that more could be done to advance the machine in the future such as adding steering and height sensors, a faster motor for increased speed and an improved hardware design.
Gavin Barnes, who also graduated in June with a degree in bioresource and agricultural engineering, worked on the robot’s software. He said the team was successful in programming it to move autonomously but that they had to connect the machine to a hotspot for it to work in the field. “In the future, we would probably want to implement a real-time kinematic unit because a farmer is not going to want to follow it around and use a hotspot,” Barnes said. “I enjoyed trying to figure out how to make things optimal and get it to move how we wanted it to. After putting in a ton of hard work, seeing it function how you wanted it to was awesome.”
In late May, the students presented their robot at the college’s spring student research symposium. Later this summer, the team will submit their project to the Farm Robotics Challenge, an annual event that invites student teams from universities and colleges across the United States to develop and showcase innovative robotic solutions for real-world agricultural challenges.
For bioresource and agricultural engineering students, a project like this one not only enhances their educational background but gives them the opportunity to gain industry experience, preparing them for the work they will do once they graduate. More than 70% of the nation’s lettuce and leafy greens are produced on the Central Coast of California, where labor is costly and investment in automative technology is starting to gain momentum. To combat rising labor costs, Liu says investment in automation is a necessary solution. “Labor is a very big issue and our labor costs are going through the roof. The industry needs automation and robots are the way to go.”
Fortunately, future students who enroll in the robotics class with Liu and want to work on the Amiga robot will get another opportunity to advance it and Liu is excited to see what future students add to the design. “Students play an important role in our research activities,” he said. “I really believe students gain deeper insight because they are getting involved in these hands-on projects.”
Visit Cultivate Summer 2024 to read more stories.