Strawberry pruning robot put to test at national competition

Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) students at Cornell took a course assignment to the next level, competing in a national showdown in which their strawberry-pruning robot faced off against others from across the country.

The team’s dedication earned them a fifth-place finish in the advanced division of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Robotics Student Design Competition, held July 28-31 in Anaheim, California.

M.Eng. students enrolled in Bio-Robotics (BEE 5900) spent the spring semester designing and testing their robots, focused on three main objectives: designing a chassis to navigate the robot through a mock strawberry field, constructing a machine learning model that would identify parts of an artificial strawberry plant, and developing a robotic arm for trimming the undesirable parts of the plant.

Sunghwan (Sunny) Jung, professor and director of graduate studies in the Department Biological and Environmental Engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, used a combination of engineering, science and mathematical principles to introduce the project in the classroom.

“The class teaches students how to use robotics for diagnosing and manipulating biological objects,” Jung said. “Additionally, students collaborate as a team, a crucial skill for working in an industrial environment."

Students in the M.Eng. program confront hands-on, real-world challenges, exemplified by the strawberry-pruning project centered around competition rules from the ASABE competition. Even with the guidelines in place, there remained a plethora of opportunities for creative problem solving.

“Overall, the development of this project was a lot of fun – one of my favorites,” said Preston Whaley, M.Eng. ’24, who studied mechanical and aerospace engineering. “The biggest challenge that I believe the team faced was the pace of the course. The course was split up by a series of three different competitions, each designed to build towards the final national competition by incorporating some of its requirements.”

To tackle these smaller competitions, Whaley and his team committed to additional after-hour work sessions, refining individual tasks and opting for a straightforward problem solving approach. The strategy paid off as their team was chosen to represent Cornell at the ASABE Robotics Student Design Competition. Joining Whaley on the team were Kunal Kumar, M.Eng. ’24, who studied systems engineering; and biomedical engineering students Yuan Jiang, M.Eng. ’24; Ganqing Hu, M.Eng. ’24; and Phyo Sone, M.Eng. ’24.

Other students taking the course found positive outcomes and discoveries during the project, despite not advancing to the national competition.

“I gained a better understanding of the engineering process and rapid prototyping,” explained Anica Huang, M.Eng. ’24, who studied biomedical engineering. “I also learned how to manage a project with minimal supervision and instruction, which should be helpful in my engineering career.”

Student vying to compete in next year’s ASABE competition will be tasked with building autonomous robots that race to collect and sort as many chicken eggs as possible within a five-minute time limit.

Main photo: Students watch a strawberry-pruning robot compete at the 2024 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Robotics Student Design Competition. Credit: ASABE.