Determining, analyzing, or predicting how crops will grow in the field takes time and labor. The interactions between genetics, environment and agricultural practices are challenging to measure. The newly published results of a five-year study on maize (or corn) demonstrate that autonomous ground robots can accurately and reliably capture this information.

The multi-year project is an example of how the Illinois tradition of cross-disciplinary research, combined with that of startups and enterprises based at the Research Park on campus, can produce results with a global impact.

The study is co-authored by Girish Chowdhary, a computer science and agricultural & biological engineering professor, with collaborators from the Department of Crop Sciences and industry partners.

Read more from the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science.