Project Grant 20223941138290

This Project Grant award for $300,000 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) aims to develop a robotic precision spraying system to improve the sustainability of small fruit crop production in the United States. The key deliverables include designing and evaluating an unmanned ground robot-based sprayer that can autonomously apply pesticides based on canopy density, with the goal of significantly reducing...

This Project Grant award of $1,000,000 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program aims to develop an automated pest management system for rural farms. The key products and services to be delivered include: Integrating artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and affordable communication networks to reduce reliance on manual labor and outdated practices in pest management. This will enhance...

Verdant Robotics, Inc. will receive $650,000 under a three-year Project Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop a bio-economic farm model and test next generation precision agriculture technologies. The funding is provided through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants program. Specifically, Verdant Robotics and Professor Aaron Smith will create a mechanistic tool to model the economic and agroecological value...

This Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program, aims to conceptualize and develop an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system capable of navigating dense forest environments to collect high-resolution 3D data on forest structure and function. The $299,937 award to Northern Arizona University (NAU) will fund the "Project ClearWing" initiative,...

This $649,999 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program supports Farmsense, Inc., a self-certified small disadvantaged business, in developing novel sensor technologies for precise insect pest monitoring and surveillance in agricultural settings. The project aims to create a system inspired by how bats detect and discriminate between different insects, allowing for tracking of insect pests down to the...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) provides $274,999 to Robigo, Inc. for research under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084). The award will support development of a microbial biopesticide platform to precisely target and eliminate crop pathogens without harming beneficial microbes, pollinators, or humans. Leveraging synthetic biology, CRISPR, and data science, the company aims to engineer improvements increasing efficacy and viability...

The National Science Foundation awarded Harvest Moon Automation Inc. a $250,665 Project Grant under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084). The grant funds the development of a precision weeder extraction tool that will remove weeds from agricultural fields without using herbicides or soil tillage. Advances in machine vision have enabled identification of individual crop and weed plants in a field. However, existing automated weeders still rely on herbicides or...

This $268,500 cooperative agreement from the Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will support the development of artificial intelligence algorithms for the automatic detection of pests in high water content plants and fruits. Awarded to Stanford University on August 12, 2022 under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA #10.025), the project aims to modify an existing X-ray phase-contrast imaging system to enable continuous...

Agrospheres, Inc. received a $1.5 million cooperative agreement award from the National Science Foundation under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships federal grant program (CFDA 47.084) to develop a novel pest management solution for control of fall armyworm. The four-year award, issued on September 1, 2021 with a completion date of August 31, 2025, will support Agrosphere's efforts to deliver bioengineered dsRNA particles targeting fall armyworm using its proprietary bioparticle...

Federal Cooperative Agreement Summary The University of Hawaii at Hilo is developing an automated filtering rearing system (AFS) for the black pupal strain of Mexican fruit fly under a $564,462 Cooperative Agreement with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Funded under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025), this three-year project (Award Date: September 15, 2025; Ultimate Completion Date: September 29, 2028) integrates robotics,...