Future-proof agriculture
We are a diverse team of students from across different engineering disciplines. With a shared passion for innovation and technology, we hope to contribute to the future of agriculture, in transitioning from human labour to full automation.
As the world population grows, climate change continues and reliable human labour becomes increasingly expensive, we must find more efficient and sustainable ways to grow food and sustain ourselves. The UBC AgroBot team will be building a fully autonomous robot capable of analyzing its environment and performing targeted farming tasks to minimize the amount of chemicals used and disruptions in the soil. We hope to raise interest in modern agriculture and its possibility for application of advanced robotics, machine learning, image recognition, artificial intelligence and much more. This project will be competing in the agBot challenge at Purdue University.
This project will be competing in the agBot challenge at the Purdue University, Indiana. This competition attracts teams from companies and universities across North America. There are two main competitions teams can participate in, each with a different challenging goal. One of the competitions requires the robot to autonomously apply fertilizers by determining if the crop needs nutrient, as well as recognize and eliminate three specific kinds of weeds. The other, challenges teams to create an autonomous machine capable of collecting a targeted soil sample, prepping and storing the sample for microscopic evaluation. These competitions will be judged by reputable members of the agricultural technology industry, such as The Climate Corporation (Monsanto), and Blue River Technology.
To build an agricultural robot that is fully autonomous with data analysis capabilities and a remote user interface is by no means a simple task. That is why we are looking for highly motivated individuals who are ready to take on this challenging yet rewarding job. The start-up like environment and multidisciplinary projects will give you the best hands-on and learning experience to tackle any engineering problems. Members of the team will be assigned to highly collaborative projects in two major categories which are robotics and automation. In small groups, members in these projects will get the full experience from researching, sourcing materials, prototyping and constructing a working product. Robotics projects will focus on the mechanical and electrical aspects of the robot such as chassis design. The automation projects will be more software-oriented such as developing an image recognition system and the user interface.
