Presentation

The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for scientific dissemination of the results achieved by the Flourish project and to create an exchange opportunity with researchers working on the related technical challenges. Flourish is a H2020 project (flourish-project.eu), whose goal is to bridge the gap between the current and desired capabilities of agricultural robots by combining the aerial survey capabilities of a small autonomous multi-copter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), with a multi-purpose agricultural Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). The Workshop is organized within the context of a dissemination event of the Flourish project, which includes also an end-user dissemination and a public demonstration. The aim of the workshop is to highlight technical and scientific challenges that arise in the deployment of small UAVs in the context of agricultural practices and, more specifically, in precision agriculture.

Format of the Workshop

The programme of the workshop will include:

  • Reports from Flourish
  • Presentations of work carried out outside Flourish
  • A panel discussion on the challenges for robotics research in precision agriculture

    • The workshop will also feature distinguished experts for invited talks, see Program.

    Program

    10:00 - 11:00 Invited talk
    Speaker: Inkyu Sa
    Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
    Title: UAVs for precision agriculture and smart farming: state-of-the art and open challenges

    11:00 - 11:20 Gianluca Bardaro, Luca Bascetta, Govanni Beri, Matteo Matteucci and Federico Polito
    An autonomous mobile manipulator for pheromone dispenser deployment in vineyards - slides

    11:20 - 11:40 Ciro Potena, Raghav Khanna and Alberto Pretto
    Toward Aerial and Ground Robots Collaboration for 3D Map Building in Precision Agriculture - slides

    11:40 - 12:00 Flavio Callegati, Alessandro Samorí, Roberto Tazzari, Nicola Mimmo and Lorenzo Marconi
    Autonomous Tracked Agricultural UGV Configuration and Navigation Experimental Results - slides

    12:00 - 12:20 Nico Bono Rosselló, Renzo Carpio, Emanuele Garone and Andrea Gasparri
    PANTHEON: A SCADA Architecture for Precision Farming of Hazelnut Orchards - slides

    12:20 - 14:00 Lunch break

    14:00 - 15:00 Invited talk:
    Speaker: Adam Jacoff
    Intelligent Systems Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce
    Title: Measuring and Comparing Small Unmanned Aircraft System Capabilities and Remote Pilot Proficiencies Using Standard Test Methods

    15:00 - 15:20 Dario Albani and Vito Trianni
    SAGA: Drone Swarms in the Field - slides

    15:20 - 15:40 Raghav Khanna, Inkyu Sa, Marija Popovic, Frank Liebisch, Roland Siegwart and Juan Nieto
    weedMap: Real-time weed mapping onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

    15:40 - 16:00 Adriano Mancini, Emanuele Frontoni, Jack Dyson and Primo Zingaretti
    Crop and Soil segmentation in precision agriculture applications from remotely sensed data

    16:00 - 16:20 Juan Pablo Rodríguez Gómez and Daniele Nardi
    Simulation environment for the deployment of robots in precision agriculture - slides

    16:20 - 16:40 Break

    16:40 - 17:40 Panel discussion
    Title: The future of small UAVs in precision agriculture applications
    Moderated by: Daniele Nardi and Alberto Pretto

    Call for Contributions

    Researchers that are interested in contributing to the workshop are invited to submit an extended abstract (up to 4 pages) by April 20th 2018. Acceptance will be announced on April 27th. All submissions must be in PDF format and should follow the IEEE RAS guidelines.

    Please submit your extended abstracts following this link (it requires a Google account).

    The accepted papers will be published on the workshop website. Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and authors are expected to give a 10 to 15 minutes presentation.

    Registration

    Registration is fees-free, participants should register themselves by following this link by May 7th, 2018.

    Location

    The workshop will be held at Villa Salvati (Pianello Vallesina, Monte Roberto, Ancona, Italy). Villa Salvati is 24 km away from the Marche Airport and 3.5 km away to the closest railway station (Montecarotto-Castelbellino) that is directly connected to the airport station (Castelferretti, the railway route takes about 20 minutes).

    Organizing Committee

  • Daniele Nardi (Sapienza Univ. Rome, Co-chair)
  • Alberto Pretto (Sapienza Univ. Rome, Co-chair)
  • Raghav Khanna (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Co-chair)
  • Inkyu Sa (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Co-chair)
  • Frank Liebisch (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, Co-chair)
  • Vito Trianni (ISTC, CNR, Roma, Italy)
  • Lorenzo Marconi (Univ. Bologna, Italy)
  • Primo Zingaretti (Marche Polytechnic University, Italy)
  • Adriano Mancin (Marche Polytechnic University, Italy)
  • Ciro Potena (Sapienza Univ. Rome)
  • Marco Imperoli (Sapienza Univ. Rome)

    • For any further information please contact pretto@diag.uniroma1.it