Autonomous Plant Irrigation System

Water scarcity is a growing problem for agricultural areas in the US, specifically California. The designed mechanism is intended to detect crop viability and only deploy water to viable crops as a means of conserving resources. Our prototype is a scaled down version of the final product that is intended to add to existing lateral and radial irrigation systems. First, the camera deploys and uses vision learning technology to determine if a crop is healthy or struggling. Then, communicaiton occurs between the vision system and the solenoid valve of the sprinklers to shut off valves for the no longer viable plants. Our demo will show our mechanism deploying water, passing over a row of fake plants with some of them painted to look non-viable, shut off water to the corresponding plant, then move along to the next row.