Student Experiential Learning Projects in Agricultural Automation and Smart Farming

“Smart Farming” efforts at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) have been integrated with agricultural automation efforts supported by Capacity Building Grant supported by NIFA (USDA) and AIRSPACES (Autonomous Instrumented Robotic Sensory Platforms to Advance Creativity and Engage Students) project supported by Maryland Space Grant Consortium(MDSGC). The broad goals of the project are aligned with USDA's “environmentally friendly agriculture” and NASA's "earth science" mission objectives. In this paper, recent student engagement with remote sensing and precision agricultural technologies utilized in the campus production agricultural fields to grow cereal crops such as corn, soybean, and wheat, as well as, the indoor and outdoor FarmBot1 (autonomous farming robot) set-ups for growing specialty crops will be addressed. The paper will also outline recent student projects to design and develop autonomous boats and ground robots to acquire geo-located water quality and agronomic data from agricultural fields, respectively.