Abstract

Temperate tree fruit production is a significant agricultural sector in the United States, encompassing a variety of fruits like apples, pears, cherries, peaches and plums. The U.S. is the second-largest producer of apples in the world, after China. Annual U.S. production is 10 – 11 billion pounds of apple. However, apple production is complicated by two major bottlenecks: dependence on and diminishing availability of hand labor for apple harvesting and a devastating bacterial plant disease called fire blight, that causes apple fruit losses and tree death. The former is the key issue driving many field robotics companies to develop semi-automated harvest platforms and test automated robotic harvesters. The latter is the one of the most difficult management problems for growers, due to the difficult nature of the disease leading to the destruction of flowers, fruit, wood and whole trees. This seminar will present the key technological aspects of apple fruit industry revolution and how robotics shape the way apple trees are grown today and how it will play a key role in battling human labor issues that producers face. At last, this talk will address the ideas for new ways how robotics and neural networks can help tackle one of the deadliest fire blight symptoms on apple which kill the whole trees: fire blight cankers. Carnegie Mallon stereo camera with strobe lighting and AI-recognition algorithms can help detect and map fire blight cankers on apple trees thus allowing their complete removal by pruning. Join us in discussing how field robotics can help agriculture in solving real agricultural problems.