Santosh Pitla, associate professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, can picture a future in which swarms of small autonomous robots roll through a corn or soybean field planting seeds or applying fertilizers. These highly sensitive robots could detect conditions — soil makeup and moisture, for example — across a given field and apply varying amounts of inputs across the field, tailored to the conditions.
A new $452,783 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture will fund research that could bring these robots a step closer to reality.
Pitla has been working to advance these robots, known as Unmanned Ground Vehicles, or UGVs, since he joined the Husker faculty in 2014. One challenge he has encountered in his research is how to refill seeds, chemicals and fertilizers automatically, without the need for the UGV to leave the field. Currently, UGVs and manned machines come to the edge of the field when their tanks are low for refilling.
