South Carolina Department of Agriculture
SCDA
Component Field Testing of StakeBot
Duration: 2023-2025
Role: PI
Research Objective: Based on the Design of the components it is necessary to be tested in the field for design confirmation. This phase of the project will take the StakeBot to the field and will be tested for staking operation. Based on the results the design will be revised.
Virtual Testing of Digital-Twin and Design of a MegaStakebot for Placing Stakes on the Ground to Support Plants with Weak Stem
Duration: 2022-2024
Role: PI
Research Objective: While our design of the ‘StakeBot’ is still an excellent solution for small farm(s), big farms with more than 5 acres of land to stake, may find challenging to use it. In this project a new concept of ‘MegaStakeBot’ will be created that will be affordable and useful for large farms in SC and US. As it is impossible to build such a huge robot in academic environment with limited space in the laboratories, after our design of the robot in this project, a Digital-Twin of the proposed robot will be created to demonstrate the functionality of each components in a virtual farm. A vision based driving mechanism is being implemented.
AI driven Robotic Planting, Placement and Removal of Stakes on Ground for Plants with Weak Stem
Duration: 2021-2023
Role: PI
Research Objective: The overarching goal of the proposed project is to fully automate the labor free placement, and removal of stakes and even planting of seeds on farming ground. Stakes are the mandatory components to be placed on the ground at the very early stage of the plant growth. Some plants like, bell pepper, tomatoes, egg plants require support from early vegetative state to the fruit set stage. When the fruits grow big and heavy, plats tend to bend or incline towards the ground. Proximity of the ground may cause the plat to get diseases, resulting lower yield. Wide area plantation on hundreds of acres of such plats will require huge number of stakes to be placed after plantation and removed after the season. This requires tremendous number of labors. During the time of labor shortages South Carolina (SC) and in the US, agricultural industry is looking for an alternative solution. So far it was found that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven robotics solution would be the most plausible. To rescue our farmers and the agriculture industry from the future and current labor shortages, in this proposal, AI driven vision and force sensing based smart collaborative robotic arms are conceptualized to be implemented for planting seeds, placement, and removal of stakes. Specific soft robotic end effector made of soft driller, injector and localized vibrator will be able to push and pull the stakes in and from the ground, respectively with ease, which is currently very labor intensive. Further, similar robotic arms with different polymer based soft end effector will be capable of planting the seeds at the very beginning of the planting season.
AI enabled Robotic Harvesting of Vegetables : A Review
Duration: 2020-2021
Role: PI
Research Objectives: Objective was to provide a comprehensive document with our finding on existing technologies that are currently being used or being conceptualized for the purpose of Vegetable Harvesting.
Fully Automated Ultrasonic Detection and Robotic Removal of Bones & Foreign Materials from Poultry
Duration: 2019-2021
Role: PI
Research Objectives: The goal of the project was to automatically find the bone fragment in ground poultry using air coupled ultrasonic scanning method, opposed to X-ray based scanning method. It was found that the ultrasonic method is accurate and can feed the Robotic arm for their removal effectively, but due to the slow speed of sound and spatial spread of ultrasound in air the method could be much slower than X-ray, which uses electromagnetic wave. Although consumption of X-ray exposed meat over a long period of time could be harmful for human health, to keep up the production rate, according the SC poultry business owners, ultrasonic could not be implemented. Faster scanning approach or high power ultrasound with higher spatial spread in the future could change the cultural work flow. This is beyond the capability of current ultrasonic technologies. Research must go on.