University of Illinois

Awards Issued Prior to January 20, 2025, Were Funded Under Previous Administrations and May Not Reflect the Priorities and Policies of the Current Administration. Agriculture Is Currently Facing a Labor Crisis. Automating Large Equipment Only Partially Addresses This Problem Due to Issues Such as Soil Compaction, Overuse of Chemicals, and Cost of Equipment. Recent Research Has Revealed That Small, Low-cost Robots Deployed Beneath the Crop Canopy Can Coordinate to Create More Sustainable Agroecosystems Through Techniques Like Mechanical Weeding, Spot Spraying, and Cover Crop Planting. These Small Robots May Make It Possiblefor Small and Large Farms to Reduce Costs of Inputs in a Scale-neutral Fashion. However, Before Agbots Can Be Ubiquitously Used at Scale for Cost Sensitive Production Systems Like Corn and Soybean, They Need to Be Made Easy-to-use by Growers Who Are Managing Large Acreage With Little Time to Spare. This Projectaims to Develop Software Tools to Make Programming Fleets of Robots Easier While Providing Tools for Runtime Monitoring. We Will Also Develop the Interaction Modules for the Agbots, Through Behavioral Planning and Interface Design. Through Intelligent Interaction, We Will Enable Natural Collaboration With the Robots on the Field and Effective Remote Supervision From Afar. Leveraging These Strengths, and the Uiuc Center for Digital Agriculture, We Will Develop a New Autonomous Farm Testbed Through This Effort to Advance the Science and Practice of Coordinated Agricultural Robotics.