UC Merced
The Foster Family Center for Engineering Service Learning
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
UAV Canopy Scanning
University of California Cooperative Extension - Merced County
Project Charter
Markell Deruso
Scott Kam
Cody Crossley
Donshawn Cato
Elizabeth Balbuena
Jesus Gonzalez Castellon
Jesan Morales-Holguin
Sean Lantz
Samuel Valdovinos
Thomas Thayer
Viridiana Navarro
Andreas Anderson
Karen Turcios
Executive Summary
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Engineering Service Learning Team will support the local farming community with innovative low-cost solutions involving unmanned aerial systems (UAS). We will be working with the Merced County Cooperative Extension (MCCE) group to assess the current need for affordable canopy scanning data which can be effectively acquired through the use of UAS. This project will be conducted through two major team sections. A section focused on the imaging sensors and image processing, and a section focused on the UAS platform and control. After an initial learning curve which is expected to be overcome over the first semester, the two sections will begin implementing each other’s systems onto a single product. The outcomes at the end of three semesters are expected to be an affordable and user friendly UAS system with the capability of providing powerful crop canopy data.
1| Mission Statement
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Engineering Team is working to design and implement a UAV solution that will help local, small-scale farmers with efficient methods of growing and aiding in the management of their crops and their respective agricultural problems through the help and knowledge of their community partner, the Merced County Cooperative Extension (MCCE). The UAV team is designing a UAV that will be beneficial to the farmers in terms of crop management. The aerial vehicle will fly over crops and fields to gather data for farmers to be able to manage and maintain the fields in a less time consuming and overall more efficient method. The UAV team and the community partner are collaborating to help local farmers attain otherwise more expensive data useful for effective and efficient crop growth.
2| Description of the Community Partner
MCCE is an organization that acts as a link between the local community agriculture and the UC's extensive research programs. Larry Burrow, an Agricultural Field Technician, is the point of contact between the UAV team and MCCE. Burrow possess the knowledge of local growers and their needs which will help guide our team in the correct direction. The overall mission of MCCE is to help local farmers in developing more efficient growing methods, helping solve pest problems, as well as helping provide farmers with more effective methods of water usage.
3| Stakeholders
One of the great aspects of this project is the large amount of direct and potential stakeholders. The most direct stakeholder is the MCCE, and UC Merced. Following these two are local, small scale farmers, and future students of UC Merced. This project also has great potential to increase activity in the drone market, which may also make society more comfortable with the idea of drones. This in turn makes society in all a potential stake holder of the project.
4| Project Outline and Objectives
As part of the agricultural community, the MCCE helps local farmers develop more efficient growing methods, solve agricultural problems, and develop crops farming and irrigation methods that use less water. Our projects goal is to lower the cost of aerial photography to provide local small scale farmers access to the expensive and very useful information which can be used to determine lack of nutrients, lack of irrigation, and sometimes even disease within crop. This team will provide a tool which will run parallel with the services which the MCCE is providing to the community.
Current objectives of the project are to attain an economically efficient UAV capable of providing detailed images of farmers’ canopies, as well as providing some data with regards to the images produced. Some specific objectives include having a cost efficient UAV platform with a user (Farmer) friendly interface, capable of autonomously gathering data over specified regions. The UAV will capture detailed images of the ground cover/Canopy and stitch together the photos for a large detailed overhead view of the canopy/ ground cover. This overhead view of the crop will then be analyzed to provide information on areas where crop growth is either inefficient, or is being hindered by an outside source.
5| Outcomes/Deliverables
We will provide farmers in the San Joaquin Valley a step into 21st century farming by providing an affordable solution to digital image scanning and processing of their crop canopies.
As the Engineering Service Learning UAV team, our two main priorities are ease of use and affordability. A successful project will provide local farmers an affordable path into 21st century farming. Depending on how the MCCE feels about the project, they may either introduce the product as a one-time purchase option for small scale farmers, or provide an affordable service for local farmers to increase farming efficiency.
This product will become a catalyst for local farmers to begin pushing for affordable technology in the agriculture field, not only pushing the envelope of technology, but also making UC Merced the pioneering source of research for the vast amount of local and commercial farmers.
