NRI: INT: COLLAB: COOPERATIVE ROBOTIC SYSTEMS FOR PRECISION AGRICULTURE AND PLANT HEALTH MANAGEMENT

The goals of this project are:1) The introduction of a collaborative robots-based and plant-centric framework which is a paradigm shift in crop management.The objective is to use robotics assets to materialize this plant-centric framework. Both aerial and ground robots will beintegrated into a system-of-systems fashion.2) The creation of innovative algorithms in robotics and computer vision to allow a multi-resolution surveillance approach. Theobjective is to use these algorithms to achieve easy transitions from a resolution level to the next.3) The fusion of hyperspectral and multispectral imaging techniques with advanced computer vision and machine learningmethodologies in order to enhance data granularity and accuracy. The objective is to have multi-modal 3D crop health mapsacross varying spatial and temporal scales.4) The creation of fertilizer recommendation algorithms that reduce financial costs and environmental impact by capitalizing onthe use of robots, sensors, and models that operate on multi-scale, multi-modal plant-centric and plant-specific crop dataprovided upon demand. The objective is to start from a limited fertilizer recommendation scenario to more comprehensive ones.5) Extensive field testing of the proposed methodologies in multiple corn test sites spread throughout Central and South CentralMinnesota, as well as Western Nevada. There are multiple objectives that range from testing components of the framework tomore complete demonstrations.