Ken Goldberg on Saving Water in Agriculture with Robots on UC Merced News
The University of Merced's Lorena Anderson published an article titled "Robots and People Working Together to Save Water and Enhance Agriculture" on Ken Goldberg's work with Stefano Carpin and Stavros Vougioukas to save water in agriculture through collaborative robotic technologies!
Read excerpts of the article below:
"A nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is helping University of California researchers refine collaborative robotic technology that could change the way crops are maintained worldwide, saving millions of gallons of water each year and taking precision agriculture to a whole new level.
"The three-year Robot-Assisted Precision Irrigation and Diagnostics (RAPID) project is led by UC Merced robotics Professor Stefano Carpin, UC Berkeley Professor Ken Goldberg — director of the People and Robots Initiative at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute — and UC Davis biology and engineering Professor Stavros Vougioukas.
"The USDA grant — a first for Carpin and Goldberg — will support the researchers and their students over the next three years as they optimize RAPID. The project is part of the National Science Foundation’s National Robotics Initiative, the country’s premier robotics program, and involves three of the four UC CITRIS campuses.
"The campuses are pursuing a joint patent on the technology, so there are commercial possibilities, Goldberg said. The potential for use in any agricultural application makes it a perfect illustration of the People and Robots Initiative and of CITRIS itself."
Read the rest of the article and more from UC Merced here.
Image: Professor Stefano Carpin and one of his robots