Dr. Joshua Peschel
Assistant Professor
Iowa State University

Smart cyber-physical-human infrastructure has traditionally focused on the urban environment with applications related to water, energy, and transportation infrastructure. In this talk I will expand the definition of infrastructure to include agricultural systems, and present a suite of new assistive technologies that leverage robotics and computer vision to broaden sensing and sensemaking across different types of environments. Demonstrative case studies will be presented, including: rapid mobile phenotyping of row crops, robot-assisted hydrology, applications for aerial telemanipulation, and automated visual sensemaking of livestock. The material covered will illustrate how the strategic, user-focused design of robotics and automated systems to accomplish unique data collection can enable better informed decision-making. This talk will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working in fields that include the agricultural sciences, engineering, and computer science.

Dr. Joshua Peschel is an Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and Black & Veatch Faculty Fellow at Iowa State University; he also holds courtesy appointments in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Peschel conducts research in the area of smart agriculture systems where he creates new technologies, data sets, and computational models for sensing and sensemaking. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense and Energy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and a number of commodity groups and private industry partners.