ROCKVILLE, Ind. — History met the future when Hoosier homestead Gerrish Farms welcomed competitors, sponsors and attendees to the second annual ag-BOT NextGen Expo, a robotic machine field competition.

 

From June 23-25, 17 teams from Canada and the United States directed their driverless robotic machines through two challenges, a seeding competition and a weed and feed event. A critical component for both was the use of high-speed internet access. Steve Gerrish, owner and manager of Gerrish Farms and an established entrepreneur, worked with AT&T to permanently install fiber optics at the farm, making the competition doable and efficient.

In addition to Gerrish Farms and airBridge, a company launched by Gerrish to provide “last mile” broadband delivery for rural ag operations, Platinum sponsors included The Climate Corp. and Yamaha Motor Ventures. The Purdue Foundry, Purdue Polytechnic Institute and Purdue University College of Agriculture were Silver sponsors.

The teams vied for $100,000 in prize money. Muchowski Farms of Canada,California Polytechnic State University (CalPoly), Virginia Tech, Colorado Mesa University Team Grit, The Ohio State University, Lairdscape of Rensselaer, Ind., and PeeDee Precision Ag of South Carolina competed in the Seeding Competition.

On June 24, their unmanned robots planted at least two 1,000-foot rows of corn while changing seed variety, weighing and applying fertilizer and streamed live video.

Team Lairdscape was awarded $25,000 and the title of 2017 agBOT Challenge Seeding Competition champion. CalPoly was awarded second place and $15,000. Third place and $10,000 was awarded to Muchowski Farms.

June 25 featured Purdue, North Star Robotics of Canada, Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, University of Regina of Canada, Muchowski Farms, Team Gizmoze of Iowa, Colorado Mesa University Team Grit, PeeDee and Prairie Robotics in the Weed and Feed Competition. The robots identified three common weeds among the corn and killed them chemically or removed them mechanically.

Prairie Robotics took home the agBOT Challenge 2017 Weed and Feed Competition champion title, along with $25,000.

Purdue was awarded second place and $15,000. Team Gizmoze earned third place and $10,000. The competition was Team Gismoze’s first event in robotics and was led by 12-year-old Sage Schildroth.

“Sage did 90 percent of the robot’s work himself, including designing the machine on CAD (Computer Aided Design),” says his father, Rhett Schildroth, the team’s engineering advisor. “Sage wants to do more portable projects like this in the future.”

After watching a few similar competitions last summer, Sage built a small robot in his home shop. His agBOT winning design went through four designs while his dad taught him to weld and solder.

Yamaha is particularly interested in robotic advancement, and donated nine vehicles – 6 side-by-sides, 2 ATVs and 1 golf cart – to some of the challenge teams. “Yamaha came in as a sponsor last year after I met Steve Gerrish,” said George Kellerman, Yamaha’s chief operations officer and general partner.

“We wanted to offer the teams encouragement, support and equipment. Every farm has a side-by-side, and they can easily be adapted  for robotic use.”

Gerrish’s airBridge is also the agriculture licensee for BATS, the Indianapolis-based Broadband Antenna Tracking Systems, which is now used worldwide. “BATS provide mobile broadband wireless networks for the oil, gas and marine industries, and is even used in the Empire State building in New York City. Ultimately, we hope it will be an even bigger catalyst for bringing broadband to rural areas like ours,” explained Gerrish.