Tech corner Using robotics to conserve water
While driving through California’s wine region, soon you may look into the fields and see robots hard at work. By Stefano Carpin, PhD; Ken Goldberg, PhD; Stavros Vougioukas, PhD; and Joshua Viers, PhD
This prototype robot is part of the RAPID system. It will turn the cap of adjustable plastic water emitters that are being designed for existing drip irrigation lines. Photo credit: Thomas Thayer
and lack of qualified labor. After a multiyear drought, the water situation somewhat improved during the 2016-17 winter, thanks to unusually intense rain, but the shortage of workers is still a major problem that is anticipated to get worse.
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To achieve a higher-quality product, grapes are best grown in a “stress irrigation” regime, and the ideal amount of water should be tailored to each vine, taking into consideration plant and soil characteristics, microclimate, current growth and other local factors. Ideally, variable rate emitters can be placed at each vine, or alternatively, small irrigation zones are created and managed. However, almost all of today’s commercial vineyards still rely on an infrastructure whereby entire blocks are uniformly irrigated, and growers are forced to overirrigate to avoid desiccation, with the consequence of consuming more water and potentially growing grapes of inferior quality.
8 Irrigation TODAY | July 2018
ny brief discussion with grape growers and farmers throughout California will soon reveal two major pain points for their day-to-day operations — water scarcity
The challenge with variable rate emitters is that adjusting them manually is time-consuming, which creates even more of a challenge given a labor scarcity. Electrically actuated devices have been considered, but they are far too costly and unreliable when deployed in harsh environmental conditions for extended periods of time.
In response to these challenges, researchers collaborating between University of California locations (Berkeley, Davis and Merced) are developing the RAPID system — robot-assisted precision irrigation delivery — to retrofit existing irrigation infrastructure to adjust water delivery at a finer grain than what is possible today. RAPID started in December 2016 and is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (National Institute of Food and Agriculture) as part of the National Robotics Initiative led by the National Science Foundation.
The RAPID system will include three components. The first is an inference system aimed at estimating how much water should be delivered to each plant. This involves concurrently gathering soil moisture measurements and aerial images on the same
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