Online Planning for Cooperative Air-Ground Robot Systems with Unknown Fuel Requirements

We consider an online variant of the fuel-constrained UAV routing problem with a ground-based mobile refueling station (FCURP-MRS), where targets incur unknown fuel costs. We develop a two-phase solution: an offline heuristic-based planner computes initial UAV and UGV paths, and a novel online planning algorithm that dynamically adjusts rendezvous points based on real-time fuel consumption during target processing. Preliminary Gazebo simulations demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in maintaining UAV-UGV path validity, ensuring mission completion. Link to video: https://youtu.be/EmpVj-fjqNY

SARAL-Bot: Autonomous Robot for Strawberry Plant Care

Strawberry farming demands intensive labor for monitoring and maintaining plant health. To address this, Team SARAL develops an autonomous robot for the 2024 ASABE Student Robotics Challenge, capable of navigation, unhealthy leaf detection, and removal. The system addresses labor shortages, reduces costs, and supports sustainable farming through vision-based plant assessment. This work demonstrates the potential of robotics to modernize strawberry cultivation and enable scalable, intelligent agricultural solutions.