Addressing the threat posed by spotted lanternflies, a team from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute has developed a cutting-edge autonomous robot. Dubbed TartanPest, this advanced machine combines an all-electric tractor, a robotic arm, and computer vision to effectively navigate fields and forests, actively seeking out and eliminating spotted lanternfly egg masses. These egg masses, containing 30-50 eggs each, are typically found on various surfaces such as trees, rocks, outdoor furniture, and rusty metal objects. By targeting these egg masses, TartanPest disrupts the pests' life cycle, preventing the hatching of a new generation in the spring.

Figure 1. TartanPest robot.

Figure 1 shows the TartanPest robot. Highlighting the urgency of the situation, Carolyn Alex, an undergraduate researcher on the TartanPest team, emphasizes that although the spotted lanternflies are currently concentrated in the eastern part of the country, their expansion is expected nationwide. By proactively investing in this issue now, the potential for higher costs in the future can be mitigated.

The ingenious design of TartanPest incorporates a robotic arm mounted on an all-electric Amiga microtractor, originally developed by Farm-ng, a robotics company based in California. Leveraging a deep learning model trained on an augmented image dataset comprising 700 images of spotted lanternfly egg masses from iNaturalist, TartanPest can accurately identify and remove these threats from various surfaces.

Spotted lanternflies pose a significant risk to a wide range of plants and crops, including grapes, apples, hops, walnuts, and hardwoods. In Pennsylvania alone, these invasive insects have the potential to cause an annual economic loss of $300 million. By deploying TartanPest, small farmers and the broader food system can reap multiple benefits, such as reduced chemical pollution on crops, enhanced farm efficiency, and decreased labor costs.

The TartanPest team consists of dedicated students from the Robotics Institute, including Carolyn Alex, Simi Asher, Dominic Guri, Cole Herber, RuiJi Liu, Shrijit Singh, and Srinivasan Vijayarangan. Under the guidance of advisor Francisco Yandun, the team showcased their remarkable creation, TartanPest, as part of Farm-ng's prestigious 2023 Farm Robotics Challenge.

Source: CMU

Cite this article:

Hana M (2023), CMU Unleashes Autonomous Warriors to Battle Spotted Lanternflies, AnaTechmaz, pp.458