https://www.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2018/07/18/grad-students-demonstrate-knowledge-and-skills-robotics-ag/795524002/
UW River Falls to field apple-picking robot in international competition
Pamela Kan-Rice, UC ANRPublished 10:02 a.m. CT July 18, 2018
UC-ANR-Apple-pickers.jpg
(Photo: UC ANR)
DETROIT — A team from UW-River Falls will be among 19 teams of college
students from top universities in the U.S., Canada and China that will
compete to build robots to mechanize farm work at the American Society
of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting in
Detroit.
The 2018 ASABE Student Robotics Challenge, being organized by Alireza
Pourreza, University of California Cooperative Extension agricultural
mechanization specialist, will be held on July 31.
“The labor availability for agriculture is decreasing while the need for
more food is increasing to feed the growing world population,” said
Pourreza, who is based in the UC Davis Department of Biological and
Agricultural Engineering. “So agriculture should switch to technologies
that are less labor-dependent, such as using more robots, to overcome
this challenge.”
The ASABE Student Robotics Challenge provides an opportunity for
undergraduate and graduate students to demonstrate their knowledge and
skills of robotics in agriculture.
“The goal of this event is to encourage young agricultural engineers to
get involved in building robots for agricultural applications and to get
experienced as the next generation of farmers,” Pourreza said.
The 2017 robotics challenge was to simulate raspberry
The 2017 robotics challenge was to simulate raspberry cane thinning,
removing green canes and pruning the yellow canes. (Photo: UC ANR)
The challenge will be to simulate the harvest and storage of apples, a
crop commercially grown in several states. The students will design and
operate robots that will autonomously harvest “apples” on field that
measures 8 feet by 8 feet. The robots will harvest eight mature apples
(red ping-pong balls), remove and dispose of eight diseased or rotten
apples (blue ping-pong balls) and leave eight immature apples (green
ping-pong balls) on the tree.
This year, the competitors are being divided into a beginner division
and an advanced division.
The University of Wisconsin River Falls Falcon Robotics team will be
competing against teams from California Polytechnic State University;
China Agricultural College; McGill University; Purdue; Texas
A&M; University of California Merced; University of Nebraska Lincoln;
Zhejiang University and Clemson University in the beginner division.
Competing in the advanced teams division is China Agricultural College;
McGill University; University of Georgia; University of California –
Davis; University of Florida and the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
The competition will be held in Cobo Center Exhibit Hall, 1 Washington
Blvd., Detroit, Michigan. There will be three rounds throughout the day
and each team will participate once in each round.
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