UBC AgroBot
UBC AgroBot needs funding to build an autonomous agricultural robot and attend the annual agBot Challenge in USA. Your contributions will go towards supporting innovations in sustainability and engineering students who have a passion for making a change.
Story Description
UBC AgroBot is building a fully autonomous agricultural robot that can precisely exterminate weeds and fertilize crops as well as record data for the farmer. This robot will help minimize the use of agrochemicals and alleviate the need for human operators. We hope this project can help accelerate automation and robotics in farming by using computer vision and artificial intelligence.
As the world population rapidly grows, there is a pressing demand for increased production in farms. However, current farming practices use an excessive amount of agrochemicals which cause devastating environmental impacts for the planet and health issues for farm workers. To solve the issue of producing more food in a sustainable manner, there is an urgent need for innovation in the field of agriculture.
The completed robot will be competing against other universities and organizations in the agBot Challenge hosted by Purdue University in the USA for May 2020.
Challenges & Impact of Your Support
AgroBot is a new project with an ambitious goal of tackling a complex challenge in its first year, and we need your support. Our team has a tremendous amount of work ahead as we prepare to compete in the agBot Challenge in 2020. Starting from scratch is not only technically challenging but also financially challenging. There are many costs associated with the AgroBot project including parts and machining required to build the robot, along with expenses to attend the competition. We estimate these costs to be approximately $35,000.
As a new team, we hope to build relationships with potential sponsors and donors who rally behind our team’s vision. Your generous support will go towards associated costs and will also strengthen our team through capacity-building and enhance the overall learning experience for our group.
About UBC AgroBot
AgroBot was started by a group of UBC students in late 2018 with a shared passion for innovation and sustainability; we have now grown to a thirty-member team. Our members are from many different disciplines, both inside and outside of engineering. Since we are facing such an open-ended challenge, all our members are working incredibly hard to develop their technical and soft skills to meet the project goal. We are learning about, developing and utilizing novel image recognition and navigation algorithms for our robot, as well as designing and building a chassis with unique exterminating mechanism. We are hoping to contribute to the future of sustainable farming using the latest technologies and cultivate the public’s awareness in the environmental impacts of farming.
