The Robot for Intelligent Perception and Precision Application (RIPPA) has completed its roadtrip around southern Australia, with the project team attending workshops in Victoria and Tasmania to put the RIPPA through its paces and talk with industry members about its potential.

The autonomous robot has been funded by the vegetable research and development levy and was designed through the Hort Innovation Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the University of Sydney’s internationally recognised Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

It’s been designed to undertake a range of tasks all day, every day, to support vegetable production. These jobs include:

• Automatically removing weeds
• Automatically detecting and removing foreign objects
• Determining crop health and soil status
• Conducting autonomous precision spraying
• Monitoring crop growth and estimating yield

If you’d like to read about the RIPPA’s appearances, the project team has produced recap articles about its attendance at VegNET workshops in Werribee and Lindenow in Victoria, as well as its field trial at the fourth annual Tasmanian Agricultural Productivity Group Precision Agriculture Expo.

These great articles include images of the RIPPA in action – including photos of the robot in the field and visualisations of what the robot ‘sees’ as it moves around the field.

To find out more about the RIPPA, including information on upcoming events, please contact Carl Larsen at carll@rmcg.com.au or Salah Sukkarieh at salah.sukkarieh@sydney.edu.au.

This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 15 May 2018. Subscribe to the Update using our online form to receive the latest industry news in your inbox every week!