Automated Agriculture

Mechanizing the hand harvesting of fresh market crops constitutes one of the biggest challenges to the sustainability of the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry.Depending on the crop, labor contributes up to 60% of the variable production cost and recent labor shortages have led to loss of production and reduction of planted acreage in several crops. Innovation is desperately needed in the design of mechanical/robotic harvesters and harvest-aid machines for delicate fresh-market crops. This talk will discuss the challenges involved, and will present new approaches toward model-based design and control of high-throughput harvesting systems, which are inspired by robotics and automation science.

Speaker: Stavros Vougioukas, UC Davis