Title: AI Powered Apple Production
Speaker: Prof. Zhao Zhang (China Agricultural University)
Playback link: https://youtu.be/YXhFfeMV_AA
Time: August 16, 2024, at 3:30 PM ACST (UTC time: Friday, August 16 2024 at 06:00:00). See the conversion to other time zones using this time zone announcement.
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Abstract: Apple production is labor intensive. With increasing labor and shrinking labor pool, the apple industry is no longer sustainable. Apple harvest and infield sorting are heavily labor involved, and thus, it requires innovative technologies to transform the current operation manner. To realize autonomous apple harvest, it requires to detect and then localize apples, as well as designing end-effector to detach apples. Also, automatic infield sorting technology would also relieve the labor shortage issue. This presentation would discuss the related content and provide a state-of-the-art technology progress.
Bio: Dr. Zhao Zhang is currently a professor with College of Information and Electrical Engineering, China Agricultural University (CAU), focusing on smart agriculture. Before joining CAU, he worked with Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University (NDSU), as a research assistant professor. His major research direction related to sensing and automation in agriculture, focusing on applying and developing innovative technologies (e.g., UAVs and ground vehicle-based sensors) to support sustainable agriculture. Projects going on include, but are not limited to, using drone imagery for automatic crop disease detection and growth condition monitoring. In addition, he collaborates with a startup on developing an automatic rock picker. One project is to develop a proximal sensing system to recognize rocks and then guide an end-effector to the target rock. Before joining NDSU, he worked in the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit at East Lansing, Michigan. His research focused on the development of innovative engineering technologies for harvesting and automated grading and sorting of apples in the orchard. He was primarily involved with system integration, as well as automatic control design and implementation. His research interests also included cost-benefit analysis of adopting mechanical harvest aid/sorting machines. He was a co-inventor for the infield sorting system (US Patent 9,919,345). In addition, he worked on the development and integration of an innovative apple harvest robot. Before joining USDA/ARS, he had completed his Ph.D. studies in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. His Ph.D. research was focused on developing a low-cost apple harvest-assist unit to improve labor productivity and decrease pickers’ occupational injuries. He earned both his M.S. and B.S. from Northwest A&F University in Agricultural Mechanization Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering, respectively.