Home   About  Projects  Publications  Classes  Interests

                                                                                                   
Vijay's research focusses on robotics in general. He works in the Agricultural Robotics and Mechatronics Group (ARM), led by Dr.Burks at the University of Florida.  His dissertation is on developing Autonomous Vehicles for operation in citrus orchards in Florida. In the past, he has also worked on developing autonomous vehicles for operation in greenhouses. He frequently participates with his colleagues in their research on developing robotic arms for harvesting citrus.





Florida Citrus

More than 90 percent of America's orange juice is made from Florida-grown oranges..(Florida Juice)

Florida is also a place where alligators use pedestrian crossing! But that is an entirely different story.



Why robots in orchards?
People picking oranges want to be paid more for picking oranges while standing on top of a ladder perched on a tree, carrying several kilos of fruits on their back under the hot summer sun of the sunshine state. Others do not even want to work in such conditions. Meanwhile, Brazilian orange growers can produce cheaper fruits than Florida growers. The economics is not encouraging in such situations. Bring the robots!


Robot Crew
Robotic Arms
Autonomous Vehicles
End Effectors 
Hi-fi Sensors

Vijay's work on Autonomous Vehicles
The aim of the research is to develop an autonomous vehicle capable of navigating an entire citrus orchard. A typical citrus orchard covers an area of several acres with thousand of trees planted in rows.

Applications identified for such a vehicle are mapping the orchards for future operations, towing the robotic harvesting arms through the orchard and scouting for locating fallen and diseased trees and taking pictures to analyze yield.

Autonomous Tractor
The work was started in 2003 on a commercially available tractor donated to the lab. The tractor was retrofitted with electrohydraulic steering circuit, camcorder camera, laser radar, speed sensor, gyroscope and computer to make it autonomous. The guidance system uses machine vision tree and path tracking, laser radar distance measurement, PID steering control and sensor fusion based on fuzzy logic enhanced kalman filter. As of 2006, the autonomous tractor is capable of navigating orchard alleyways irrespective of the size of trees or sunlight and cloud conditions. (more details)

Autonomous E-gator
The work was started in 2006 on an e-gator donated to the lab. This vehicle is expected to take over the rest of the research from the tractor. (more details)


Autonomous Greenhouse Vehicle
This vehicle has been developed by three different people. Vijay developed the machine vision and laser radar based guidance system for this vehicle. (more details)




Home   About  Projects  Publications  Classes  Interests