ARA-Enabled Teleoperation of Automated PhenoBots
This work is led by Dr. Lie Tang, Professor & Faculty Scholar of Plant Science Institute, Iowa State University.
Researchers at the Iowa State University Plant Sciences Institute have long examined the effects of plant genotype and environment on the physical manifestation – the phenotypes, or traits – of agricultural crops. Through various sensor-equipped robots, the research team has measured characteristics such as plant height and volume, leaf angle and area, stalk diameter, and more. These measurements can be fed into computer vision systems to create 3D reconstructions, and thus to automatically detect (and ultimately predict) broader phenotypic features.
Dr. Lie Tang and Dr. Hongwei Zhang with PhenoBot at ARA testbed
At the ARA public launch event in September 2023, Dr. Lie Tang demonstrated use of the team’s PhenoBots for taking measurements in a corn field. While the PhenoBots have traditionally been operated by handheld remote controllers in close proximity, the September demonstration showed how the robot vehicles could be manipulated and stream data from much farther away over ARA’s 5G standalone wireless network. The network, powered by Ericsson on the ARA testbed, can deliver throughput greater than 2.5 gigabits per second.
