The Agricultural Systems and Technology club's robotics team, one of the newest teams on the U of A campus, recently made its competitive debut by participating in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

The team, competing in July against seven other beginner teams from across the U.S. and internationally, finished fourth with its cotton harvester robot prototype.

The robot featured autonomous navigation capabilities with line detection and follow, as well as measurement from its surroundings. It was able to detect, stop and pick ripe cotton balls, and store harvested, husk-free cotton in its storage unit. It successfully avoided picking unripe cotton balls.

The team's prototype harvested the third-largest among of cotton (23.8 grams from the competition table), but because the TuskBot was not programmed to map the locations of unripe cotton balls in its memory, just missed a third-place finish.

The team includes Alex Edmiston, president of the club, Atticus Warren and Gabriel Cox. Team mentors are Chaitanya Kumar, Reddy Pallerla and Yihong Feng.

Kumar, Pallerla and Feng are graduate students advised by assistant professor Dongyi Wang, who is an agricultural robotics team adviser, along with assistant professor of precision agriculture Cengiz Koparan.

Koparan has a split appointment with AECT and the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. Wang has a split appointment between BAEG and the Department of Food Science.

"The team did great, even though this was the first time for everyone to compete," Koparan said. "Team members dedicated their time and put in extra effort to make sure our TuskBot successfully stood out against other robots during the competition rounds. They were able to come up with a unique cotton-picking concept."

Don Johnson, University Professor of the Agricultural Systems Technology Management program in the Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology, supervises the club. All three are faculty members and researchers and scientists with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the U of A System Division of Agriculture.

Koparan has seven years of ASABE robotics club mentorship experience, including with Clemson University and North Dakota State University. His teams earned second-place finishes in 2021 and 2016, and a third-place finish in 2018.

The agricultural robotics team plans to build two robots for next year's event, one for the beginner division and one for the advanced division. The club will also pair with another robotics team, RIOT robotics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The RIOT team will help develop customized circuits and controller boards, as well as contribute to prototyping robots for strawberry-related competition rules. The RIOT team consists of President Nathaniel House, Grace Harding, Thalia Hawkins and Andrew Shields.

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