Boston University Wins Robotics Challenge with Innovative Farming Robot
Boston University emerged victorious at the MassRobotics Form & Function Challenge held during the Robotics Summit & Expo. The university's team won first place and the audience choice award with their AGROBOT T.O.M., a gantry-mounted precision-harvesting robot designed for indoor and vertical farming. This robot autonomously navigates growbeds, utilizing lidar and a vision/machine learning pipeline to identify fruit, assess ripeness and damage, and harvest produce using a soft robotic gripper. The competition featured teams from various universities, including MIT, Northeastern University, and Purdue University, showcasing projects that combined aesthetic design with functional robotics solutions. 
