A robotic apple harvester shown in high density apple in Washington State, USA.
Manoj Karkee presented a webinar, "Artificial Intelligence, Cyber-Physical Systems and Robotics for Agriculture," on Friday, March 27, 2020, at 9:00 am PDT (UTC-7:00). The edited video is available through YouTube, viewing at our page here, and download as a .mp4 [205MB].
Manoj is an associate professor at Washington State University, USA.
Abstract.
Decreasing availability and increasing cost of farm labor is a critical challenge faced by agricultural industry around the world. Robotics has played a key role in reducing
labor use and increasing productivity in farming. Modular automation and robotics technologies developed in recent years, decreasing cost and increasing capabilities of sensing, control and automation technologies such as UAVs, and increasing emphasis by governments around the world in mechanizing and automating agriculture have created a conductive environment to develop and adopt smart farming technologies for the benefit of agricultural industries around the world including smaller, subsistence farming operations common in developing and underdeveloped cou
A UAV flying in vineyards in Washington State, USA.
ntries. In this presentation, the author will first discuss the importance of precision and automated/rob
otic systems for
the future of farming (Smart Farming, Ag 4.0). He will then summarize past efforts and current status of agricultural automation and
robotics, particularly for fruit crop production, followed by an introduction of the novel systems being developed in his program. The technologies to be introduced include robotic fruit harvesting, fruit tree pruning, and crop thinning. At the end, major challenges and opportunities in agricultural robotics and related areas as well as potential future directions in research and development will be discussed.
Presenter Biography.
Dr. Manoj Karkee is an Associate Professor in the Biological Systems Engineering Department at Washington State University (WSU). He was born and raised in eastern hills
Manoj Karkee, speaker for webinar #55.
of Nepal. He received his diploma in Civil Engineering and undergraduate in Computer Engineering from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. His MS was in remote sensing and GIS from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and his PhD was in Agricultural Engineering and Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University. Dr. Karkee leads a strong research program in the area of sensing, machine vision and agricultural robotics at the WSU Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems. He has published widely in such journals as ‘Journal of Field Robotics’, ‘Computers and Electronics in Agriculture’, and ‘Transactions of the ASABE’, and has been an invited speaker at
numerous national and international conferences and universities. Dr. Karkee is currently serving as an elected chair for International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee 8.1, Control in Agriculture, as an associate editor for ‘Transactions of the ASABE’, as a guest editor for ‘Sensors’, and Editorial Committee Member of Information Processing in Agriculture. Dr. Karkee was recognized as ‘2019 Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence and IoT’ by Connected World magazine and was featured as the ‘Western Innovator’ by Capital Press.