February 2021 - 17

IRRIGATION & WATER MANAGEMENT
Initiative to address these challenges.
They are developing a robotic
pressure chamber that can harvest
its own sample leaves and test them
on site, immediately, to provide the
freshest data. The system will work to
gather data even in large fields, and
over a period of time rather than just
providing a snapshot.
Having field data that's updated
frequently can help farmers plan
irrigation frequency and conserve
water, optimize the time and effort
spent by crop specialists, and help
decrease some of the costs in the foodproduction
chain.
Current measuring techniques
involve collecting leaf samples and
transporting all of them to an off-site
location, where testers can use very
accurate, expensive pressure chambers;
and sampling and analyzing leaf
samples in the field using hand-held
pressure chambers, Karydis explained.
In the first category, leaf samples can
get mixed up, making it impossible to
track them back to the specific areas of
the field they came from, Karydis said.
" In addition, the properties of the
leaf might vary given the time elapsed
between being sampled and being
analyzed, which in turn may yield
misleading results, " he said.
Handheld instruments in the field can
be less accurate, but testing can be done
multiple times with different leaves
from the same plants, but this method
is time- and labor-intensive, and must
be undertaken by specially trained
personnel, he said.
" If we're going to use precision
agriculture, we need the most accurate
information-gathering systems we can
make, " Carpin said.
He has already worked with colleagues
at UC's Davis and Berkeley campuses
to create the robot-assisted precision
irrigation delivery (RAPID) system,
which travels along rows of crops
adjusting irrigation flows according to
sensor data that
tells the robot
precisely what's
needed for each
plant.
They'll use the
STEPHANO
CARPIN
same base robot
as RAPID, but
equip it with GPS
and a pressure
chamber being
designed by the
researchers at
Riverside, and pair it with drones that
can survey the fields and direct the
robot to areas of interest.
" Using this process, farmers could
survey plants all day long, even in large
fields, " Carpin said.
The four-year project will support
graduate students as well as summer
research opportunities for undergraduates.
The project has four phases: development
of the chamber; developing machinevision
so the robot can " see " the water
coming from the leaf stems; coordinating
multiple robots - in the air and on the
XANADU
ground; and evaluation.
The researchers plan to have the first
set of automated pressure chamber
prototypes fabricated by spring 2021,
and to evaluate their performance and
refine designs in controlled settings over
spring and summer 2021. They expect to
have a completed setup by winter 2022
so they can begin controlled field testing.
" We have to be quick about it because
if we miss a peak growing season, we
have to wait another nine months for the
next one, " Carpin said. " We'd like to be
able to start testing next summer and test
every summer, and we need to be able to
maximize the tests. "
When all of the components have
been designed, the designs and code
will be open source, and all the data
collected during the project will
be made available to the scientific
community, the researchers wrote in
their proposal.
The project came about after Carpin
and Viers, director of the Center for
Information Technology Research in
the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at
UC Merced, had been talking with
area farmers about the challenges
of growing almonds and grapes.
Professors Karydis and Amit K.
Roy-Chowdhury had been hearing
the same challenges from citrus and
avocado growers in the Riverside area,
so the four partnered up.
" This research partnership with UC
Riverside will advance our capabilities
in precision food systems broadly, and
most importantly contribute to the
presence of UC Merced and CITRIS in
the emerging San Joaquin Valley agfood-tech
sector, " Viers said.
" California agriculture presents
a challenge in terms of scalability, "
Carpin said, " but this is an exciting
collaboration because we'll get to
develop a system that will work on
different kinds of crops. " VGN
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VGN | FEBRUARY 2021 | 17
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February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of February 2021
