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ROYAL CITY -- As the red, golf cart-like utility vehicle came to the end of a row of apple trees Tuesday morning and began turning the corner into the next row, driver Brad Hamner raised his hands to show the machine was actually driving itself.
Outfitted with sensors and software, the prototype electric vehicle can be programmed to move through orchards and use technologies that increase farm efficiency, reduce labor costs and more.
Hamner, a research programmer with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is one of many researchers across the country involved in a multimillion-dollar initiative to automate production of labor-intensive specialty crops such as apples, cherries and other tree fruits.
"It takes a very large amount of infrastructure and a lot of labor to grow these crops," said Sanjiv Singh, a research professor with Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, which has designed robots for the military, the Department of Energy and other federal organizations. "Agriculture has been one of our main interests because it seems like a great application of the technology we've developed."
Singh and Tony Koselka, vice president of engineering for San Diego-based Vision Robotics Corp., were leading testing efforts in the Royal City orchard this week for the "auto-nomous prime mover" and a vehicle known as the scout, a trailer carrying eight cameras mounted on a 10-foot tower.
Washington State University is one of the partners of the project, along with Oregon State University, Purdue University, Pennsylvania State University and several private companies.
The team received $6 million last fall through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Research Initiative to pay for the four-year project. Another $6 million in money and use of land and equipment came from industry members, Singh said.
The initiative began as a way to solve critical issues for specialty crops through research and extension activities, according to the USDA.
"This is more money than any specialty crop researcher has seen before," said Gwen Hoheisel, a WSU Extension educator for Benton and Franklin counties who's involved with the project.
Singh emphasized the importance of partnerships with Extension employees.
"Without the extensions it would be very hard to do what we need to do," he said. "We rely on extensions to take this technology out to the field," test it and get the word out to growers.
On Tuesday, Koselka and his team were testing different angles, heights and exposures of the cameras to figure out the best configuration for capturing the most fruit in each image, he said.
This is the third year of testing the scout, Koselka explained, which is designed to help growers get to know the size of their crop, which trees are the biggest producers and more.
Images from the scout could provide growers with information about the number of blossoms on trees at the beginning of the season, he said.
Getting a sense of the size of the crop early on could help with decisions about thinning, and later in the season the data could help determine when and where to start picking, Koselka said.
Data collected during this week's tests will be compared to hand counts completed by workers provided by the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, he added.
The automated mover, which was pulling the scout Tuesday, has the potential to carry a wide variety of sensors and equipment -- such as a sprayer or mower -- that could make orchard care and harvesting more efficient, Singh said.
While the machines are still in the testing phase, as the project has another three years before completion, he said the team is aiming to keep technology as simple as possible to minimize costs to farmers when machines become commercially available.
Analyzing the return on investments for growers using the different technologies is another component of the project, Singh said.
Researchers hope to have commercialized equipment by the end of the project, he added.
Other technology also being researched and developed includes insect monitors, weed detection and management systems, plant stress and disease detection, and equipment to streamline harvest of easily bruised fruits such as apples.
"We would like to see how we can make any improvement in the picking process," Singh said.
