Carnegie Mellon University’s TartanPest is an innovative robot designed to autonomously destroy spotted lanternflies, an invasive species known to destroy crops. The system consists of an all-electric tractor, a robotic arm as well as computer vision to help it detect and destroy spotted lanternfly egg masses.
The lanternfly egg masses contain 30-50 eggs each and typically found on trees, rocks, outdoor furniture aor rusty metal surfaces. A robotic arm was attached to the base of an all-electric Amiga microtractor created by California-based robotics company Farm-ng. The deep learning model was refined on an augmented image data set created from 700 images of spotted lanternfly egg masses from iNaturalist.
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Currently, spotted lanternflies are concentrated in the eastern portion of the nation, but they are predicted to spread to the whole country. By investing in this issue now, we will be saving higher costs in the future,” said Carolyn Alex, an undergraduate researcher on the TartanPest team.
