Monroe County Master Gardener Association

Naida sent in this for posting:

Plant America; Grow & Share

Robot Identifies Diseases in Plants
Ann Arbor Autonomous Vehicle Group (A3VG) created the National award-winning FarmAidBot robot on the Washtenaw Community College campus (WCC). The A3VG core team called “Teamato” consisting of computer science grad student at Eastern Michigan University, a mechanical engineer at Ford Motor Company, an electronic systems engineer at Brose Group, and co-founder of A3VG and agri-tech entrepreneur. All are also members of the Detroit Autonomous Vehicle Group.Teamato targeted the development of a machine learning platform to identify diseased vegetables in greenhouse and agricultural field settings. When the members discovered that Washtenaw Technical Middle College operates a hoop house filled with lush tomato, melon and bean plants on Washtenaw Community College campus, it became the center of the group’s efforts.Over the course of four months and many hours in the hoop house, the group created FarmAidBot, a motorized system of sensors, cameras, computers and software that was trained to identify various types of molds, wilt, canker and powdery mildew on plants. It was awarded “Best Use of Artificial Intelligence” in the challenge. For the 2019 national challenge, they plan to continue to develop and refine this robot plus create an automated navigation system for wheelchairs.Washtenaw Technical Middle College, an academy chartered by and located on the campus of WCC, uses the garden to supplement classes ranging from biology to entrepreneurship.Submitted by Carol Brodbeck as extracted from WCC’s December 2019 issue of On the Record.Carol BrodbeckFROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENTPicture taken from the FarmAidBot website