Solving agricultural challenges with
By Rachel Steere
engineering and robotics FROM CREATING FRAGILE CROP HARVEST-AIDING MOBILE ROBOTS (FRAIL-BOTS) for strawberry harvesting to developing an automated robotic orchard platform designed to optimize fruit pickers’ performance, Stavros Vougioukas is addressing agricultural challenges and making an impact on California agriculture. In fresh market fruit production, harvesting is one of the most labor-intensive operations, incurring high cost and dependence on a large seasonal semi-skilled workforce, which is becoming less available. Vougioukas’ work in agricultural robotics, mechanization and automation for specialty crops has resulted in improved systems through the design, development and testing of actuators, sensors and control systems for optimal management of inputs and products. “There are so many things that are cool about working with robotics and engineering. The feeling of seeing a complicated system actually work in the field years after writing a proposal and putting ideas together is extremely satisfying,” said Vougioukas, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering (BAE). In 2012, Vougioukas received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of the National Robotics Initiative to help fund a fouryear project devoted to the development of FRAIL-bots to increase harvesting efficiency by reducing the time to transport fruit-filled containers. Vougioukas and his team were successful in building the strawberry harvesting bots, which remain on campus awaiting extended testing.
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