Introduction¶
Robotics and AI is revolutionizing the what and how we work today and will continue in the future. Today, robots are augmenting the capability of human workers in various industries: logistics, healthcare, agriculture, etc.
With growing global food insecurity and pressures from climate change, it is more important than ever to develop novel approaches to sustainable agriculture. The 2023 PARC Engineers League invites teams to reimagine how robotics and AI can steer the way to a more sustainable agriculture future for Africa.
The challenge of the competition is to build software to operate the PARC AgRobot (a wheeled mobile robot) to perform autonomous agricultural tasks including: precise navigating through a farm, detecting weeds within crop rows using computer vision and autonomously planting seeds on the farm.
The competition consists of two phases: the Simulation Phase and the Real World Phase.
Simulation Phase¶
In this phase, teams will work with the PARC AgRobot in simulation (using the Gazebo Robot Simulator) and use state-of-the-art tools (e.g., ROS, MATLAB, OpenCV, etc.) to develop solutions to complete two fundamental tasks for agricultural robots:
- Autonomous field navigation
- Weed detection
This phase is fully virtual. Participating teams will follow the instructions in this documentation to set up their PCs and download the complete simulation packages required to complete the tasks. Teams are required to complete and upload their solutions on or before the Phase 1 deadline. Following team evaluations, best performing teams will qualify to compete in Phase 2: Real World Phase.
Real World Phase¶
This phase will take place in-person in Senegal in July 2023. Teams will get the opportunity to integrate their software physical PARC AgRobot system and compete in a partner farm for the final competition.
Prizes & Awards¶
Top performing teams in the final competition will receive prizes and mentoring opportunities from our sponsors. All participants will receive a certificate of participation.