2018-10-01 15:30:00 2018-10-01 16:30:00 America/Indiana/Indianapolis Distinguished Lecture Series - Prof. Avital Bechar Senior Research Scientist & Head of the Department of Production, Growing and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Agricultural Engineering (IAE), Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Israel STEW 279

October 1, 2018

Distinguished Lecture Series - Prof. Avital Bechar

Event Date: October 1, 2018
Time: 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Location: STEW 279
Contact Name: Erin Gough
Contact Phone: 765-496-0606
Contact Email: egough@purdue.edu
Open To: All
Priority: No
School or Program: Industrial Engineering
College Calendar: Show
Senior Research Scientist & Head of the Department of Production, Growing and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Agricultural Engineering (IAE), Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Israel

"Dealing with High Variances in Agriculture: Industrial Engineering and Robotics Perspectives"

ABSTRACT

The agricultural domain characteristics are ill-defined, vary continuously, have inherent uncertainty, and generate unpredictable and dynamic situations. Complexity increases when dealing with natural objects, such as fruits and leaves, because of high variability in shape, texture, color, size, orientation and position that, in many cases, cannot be determined a-priori.
 
Cultivation and agricultural production processes are complex, diverse, labor-intensive and usually unique to each crop. The process type and components are affected by many factors, including crop characteristics and requirements, the geographical/geometric/geological environment, the climatic and meteorological conditions, market demand and consumer preferences, and the farmer’s capabilities and means.
 
Fundamentals, new concepts and approaches, and their implementation in agricultural robotics and production engineering of agricultural processes will be presented. The current R&D, implementation and activities conducted in our lab on these topics will be reviewed, including several case studies: a weighing system to improve the production of high variance packages labeled by products’ count; greenhouse growing methods to increase productivity; mechanical harvesting of dates; an autonomous robot for early disease detection; a spraying robot for greenhouse specialty crops; a robotic sonar for yield assessment and plant status evaluation; an advanced human-robot collaborative system for selective tree pruning; a methodology to design an optimal agricultural robot; and a 3D modeling of greenhouse environments, using a robotic platform.
 

Photo of Prof. Avital Bechar

BIO

Professor Avital Bechar is a senior research scientist and the head of the department of Production, Growing and Environmental Engineering at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering (IAE), Agricultural Research Organization (ARO) in Rishon LeZion, Israel, and an Associate Professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel. During 2011-2012 he was on a sabbatical leave at Purdue University. He holds a BSc degree in Aerospace Engineering and a MSc in Agricultural Engineering, both from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Ben-Gurion University, on agricultural robotics and human-robot integrated systems. Prof. Bechar is the founder and head of the Agricultural Robotics Lab at IAE, where he is conducting fundamental and applied research in robotics for agriculture, human-robot collaborative systems, and sensor technologies, and is developing new concepts and approaches for the operation and development of agricultural robots. He is the author of more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications. He has authored several book chapters and has led and participated in more than 40 local and international research projects. Prof. Bechar is the former chair of the Israeli Society of Agricultural Engineering (ISAE); a co-founder of the Israeli Robotics Association (IROB); a member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Agricultural Robotics; a member of the intelligent automation and robotics work group (AE09) of the European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng); and a member of the CIGR Section V committee (Systems management).

Reception to follow