38 unmanned systems
inside
April/May 2017
LAND AGRICULTURE
"FOR PRODUCERS,
it's going to accelerate
the rate at which
we can improve the
genetic material."
Stephen Long, project director
and professor of Crop Sciences
and Plant Biology,
University of Illinois
The robot uses
miniature tank treads
to help it traverse both
dry and muddy fields. A
boom arm lifts sensors
and the GPS antenna
above the plant canopy
when necessary.
The project is funded with a $3.1 million
grant from the Advanced Research Projects
Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)'s Transportation
Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture
(TERR A) program, an effort w ithin the
U.S. Department of Energy. Scientists at the
University of Illinois' Carle R. Woese Institute
for Genomic Biolog y are developing the
TERR A-Mobile Energy-Crop Phenotyping
Platform (MEPP) robot in partnership with
researchers from Cornell University and
Signetron, an engineering services firm based
in Berkeley, California.
The robot that Chowdhar y and his col-
leagues are working on travels using con-
tinuous tracks, or miniature tank treads,
which help it traverse both dry and muddy
f ields. "It only moves 5 centimeters per sec-
ond," Chowdhar y said, which amounts to
about 9.8 feet per minute. "It's designed to
be slow, or else the sensors would not get
any useful data."
The TERRA-MEPP robot currently relies on
a scooter battery and can operate for roughly
an hour. The researchers have a version in the
works that uses a lithium-ion battery to extend
that to more than 2.5 hours.
Sensors
The robot uses hyperspectral, thermal, and
high-definition cameras, along with active
radiation sensors such as LiDAR and time-of-
f light cameras that emit light pulses to scan
objects. With these sensors, the rover gathers
information on plant traits such as stem diam-
eter, stalk height and leaf area and monitors
environmental conditions such as soil tem-
perature and moisture. A boom arm helps the