ROBOTICS INTEGRATED HIGH TUNNELS (ROBINHIGHTS): CREATING PROFITABLE FOOD OASES IN URBAN ECOSYSTEMS

Urban farms can enable efficient and fresh local food production, minimize food miles, and open new avenues of income for minorities and small communities. However, urban farms face unique challenges associated with achieving profitability at small production scales, maintaining air and soil quality, irrigation, pest management and the climate required for efficient and economically viable produce. In this project, we emphasize High Tunnels (HTs), which are low cost, unheated, metal-tube structures covered with one or two layers of greenhouse plastic to create a protected environment for crops, as ideal solutions for urban farming. HTs are gaining in popularity as they prolong the production season especially in midwestern and northeastern climatic zones, increase yields and improve the quality of high-value specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables and cut flowers. The primary goal of the projectis to investigate the feasibility of robot-aided autonomy to streamline labor intensive operations in the urban setting. Specifically, the goal of the Robot Integrated High Tunnels (RobInHighTs) platform is to integrate recent advances in robot hardware design, vision-based perception, autonomous navigation, and manipulation towards automating high tunnel operations such as harvesting, pruning and pest management thereby achieving sustainable increases in yield and profitability. A secondary goal is to map the economic implications that accompany the increase in yield and identify barriers to adoption by engaging with urban and minority farmers in Illinois and Alabama through our Extension activities. Furthermore, we aim to train the next generation agricultural workforce through curriculum development and workshop activities steeped in robotics.