Precision Agriculture with

Precision Agriculture is maximizing the productivity of a farm through observing, measuring, and responding to data related to crop health and behavior. The AGRowBot™ is the first robot in our family of ground and air platforms to support small and medium-sized farms, the backbone of rural communities across America.

One ground unit working alone may take hours, if not days, to collect all the necessary data from a mile-long field. Therefore our vision incorporates teams of diverse unites working collaboratively with distributive decision-making and dynamic mission planning. The AGRowBot™ platform will allow the creation of scalable groups and affordable solutions which can accommodate small, medium, and large farm operations. A collaborative ecosystem will allow the fusion of all sensor data from multiple platforms into one central repository for in-depth processing and continuous training of the intelligent plant ID system. We envision a future where tightly integrated human/robot teams can collaboratively complete mission-critical tasks.

Features

Artificial Intelligence

AGRowBot™ runs visual data collected from unit-mounted sensors through an image classifier using TensorFlow, an open-source machine learning tool from Google. As the program analyzes the plant, it compares the characteristics within the frame of reference against the images in its library and provides a level of confidence for plant identification and plant health decision-making, such as identifying undernourishment, blight, pests, or invasive species.

Immediate Action Reports

The farmer receives the crop health field report to their smartphone or tablet to develop a response plan for plant care such as weeding, nutrient injection, fertilizing, or spraying. This report can form the backbone of an Echelon-style mission plan to be carried out by human or other robotic agents for the farm of the future.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and More

Teams of UGSs and UAVs of multiple size and ability can deploy to provide long-range communication, dynamic mission planning and routing, distributed problem solving, and shared navigation maps and protocols.

Graphical User Interface

Connect directly to the AGRowBot™ through the ground control system using a hand-held device such as a smartphone or tablet. Integrated controls can provide detailed metrics on scanned plants, report generation to use in mission planning, and distribution of growth characteristics to living libraries for increased recognition of plant health metrics.