Blueberry picking robot could win $250,000 prize

Here’s an interesting robotics challenge – a coalition of blueberry farmers are offering a $250,000 prize for automation solutions that improve blueberry picking. The deadline for entries in the c...

29 October 2015, by Silicon Valley Robotics

euRathlon 2015 announces Grand Challenge winners

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, the euRathlon competition is the first outdoor competition where teams of land, sea and air robots must cooperate in a realistic disaster-response scenario. F...

29 September 2015, by Marta Palau Franco

Day Four at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

Weather conditions challenged the teams participating on the second day of euRathlon 2015 two-domain sub-challenges. The morning started with the remaining team that had yet to participate in the la...

25 September 2015, by Marta Palau Franco

Day Three at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

The first day of euRathlon 2015 two-domain sub-challenges started with the land and air (L+A) combined scenario, followed in the afternoon by the sea and land (S+L), where robots had to search for mis...

24 September 2015, by Marta Palau Franco

Robots in Depth: Gregory Dudek on field robotics

Robots in Depth is a new video series featuring interviews with researchers, entrepreneurs, VC investors, and policy makers in robotics, hosted by Per Sjöborg. In this first episode, Per speaks ...

24 September 2015, by Per Sjöborg and Robots in Depth

Day Two at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative disaster response scenarios. On the second day of single-domain trials, t...

23 September 2015, by Marta Palau Franco

Day One at euRathlon 2015: Video recap

Inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident, euRathlon is a civilian outdoor robotics competition focused on realistic cooperative disaster response scenarios. euRathlon 2015 takes place in the area surro...

21 September 2015, by Marta Palau Franco

Coming of age: Clearpath’s Ryan Gariepy on growing a robotics startup

Launched in 2009 by a group of Waterloo engineering students, Clearpath's unmistakeable bright yellow and black robots have become synonymous with unmanned vehicle research in university research ...

01 September 2015, by Hallie Siegel

ep.

186

podcast

Towards Automating Fieldwork, with Hans-Peter Grothaus

Transcript included. In this episode, Per Sjöborg talks to Hans-Peter Grothaus, from CLAAS, about automation in agriculture....

10 July 2015, by Per Sjöborg

Book Review: ‘Practical Field Robotics’ by Robert Sturges

Practical Field Robotics: A Systems Approach by Robert H. Sturges, Jr. from Virginia Tech is an interesting book about how to design a field robot from a high level systems approach, and how to build ...

07 July 2015, by Robots for Roboticists

10th annual Field Robot Event underway

This year's Field Robot Event (FRE 2012) began today and runs through Saturday. I will bring together what reports I am able to find once the dust settles, but meanwhile you can view videos from past ...

28 June 2012, by John Payne

Australian research organization’s description of agricultural robotics

On a web page describing their current efforts in agricultural robotics, CSIRO ICT Centre describes the focus area this way: The application of field robotics to agriculture is an emerging area of ...

09 January 2012, by John Payne

The importance of robotics to the achievement of sustainability

In a mid-August post bearing the same title, on my primary blog, I stated: I firmly believe that (short of convincing the vast majority of people to return to subsistence farming, something which cou...

28 September 2011, by John Payne

On the meaning of “cultivation”

As it commonly applies to raising plants, "cultivation" usually refers to a process involving the manipulation of soil, to incorporate plant residues into the soil after the previous harvest, to prep...

22 August 2006, by John Payne

field robotics