TerraByte teams up with local industry to create data rover

Researchers will be actively testing machine learning models in the field this spring thanks to the latest innovation of the TerraByte project led by The University of Winnipeg’s Dr. Christopher Bidinosti, Department of Physics, and Dr. Christopher Henry, Department of Applied Computer Science. 

Along with postdoctoral scholar Dr. Michael Beck, they recently partnered with R-Tech Industries to design and build the data rover, a lightweight, solar-powered, remote-operated machine that will travel across soybean plots on fat bike tires to collect large volumes of crop data in the form of digital images as well as data from other sensors for hyperspectral and 3D imaging.

Bidinosti was thrilled by how quickly the team at R-Tech Industries brought the UWinnipeg vision to life.

“We brought some ideas to them and within months they had it built, which is really quite remarkable,” said Bidinosti. “This demonstrates what the future might hold for robotics and autonomous vehicles in agriculture.”

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