By Brooke Keltner
The old agricultural adage goes, “knee-high by the 4th of July.” It’s a visual cue indicating whether farmers will have a bountiful harvest in the fall based on the height of their corn stalks.
This July, members of Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Agricultural Robotics Club are focused on corn stalks that are planted too close to each other. Another big difference – the corn stalks are a few inches tall and 3D-printed.
The club will be competing in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers’ Robotics Student Design Competition held in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 12-15.
The competition
The competition challenges undergraduate and graduate students from universities around the world to build a robot that can complete a simulated agricultural task. This year, the robot must travel through a miniature corn field and correctly identify when there is a single corn stalk, a double corn stalk, or no corn stalk at all.
“When you’re really planting crops, you want the corn stalks to be spaced from each other,” said Joy Howard, who’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and minor in agronomy. “This way the corn stalks are not competing for resources. If corn is planted too close to each other, farmers get rid of the weaker stalk and keep the stronger one.”
Source : siu.edu