How Crimson Student, Brandon, Conducted Research as a High Schooler!

Introduction

Hello there! My name is Brandon Pae, and I am a rising senior in the Horace Mann School of Bronx, New York. When I became a freshman in high school, I started working with Crimson because I wanted to find a mentor who could help me explore robotics outside of school. As a result, I met the outstanding Dr. David Buisson, who helped me solidify my environmental robotics passion and kickstart my project on agricultural robotics, AgBotics.

The Process: Developing AgBotics

In high school, I joined the First Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics club and my passion for robotics and computer science quickly solidified. The prospect of developing a robot that could autonomously replicate human behaviors was extremely fascinating to me and I wanted to learn more.

Thus, I decided to explore robotics more outside of school. At first, I did some research on new robotics developments. While this was interesting, I wanted to narrow my research and utilize it to do something useful.

In particular, I became interested in seeing how robotics could benefit environmental problems, since I had researched ways to stop deforestation and save the adorable red panda in a school project.

Working with my Crimson mentor Dr. David Buisson helped transform my interest into a real project. He pushed me to understand why I was so interested in environmental robotics. At first, I thought it was because I was curious about how robotics, something non-natural, interacted with nature. However, I soon realized that the core reason why I wanted to research environmental robotics was because I was frustrated by how society has ignored the long-term environmental consequences of cheap actions, like using fossil fuels. Without changing our behavior, it was clear that we would reach an irreversible global catastrophe. I knew that I had to help solve this dilemma using my passion for robotics.

With my newfound resolve, I worked with Dr. Buisson to research environmental robotics. I learned about the many fascinating ways in which robotics was revolutionizing areas like agriculture, species conservation, and oceanography. Especially interested in agriculture, an essential pillar of society, I was inspired to start an initiative and make contributions to agricultural robotics.

However, I found that this wasn’t so simple. First of all, this was my first time working on a large initiative outside of school and it was difficult to manage alongside schoolwork. Secondly, when I tried to create a robot that would automatically detect and collect crops, I found that it was extremely complicated (computer vision, inverse kinematics, etc). With the intensive demands from extracurriculars and school, I realized that it was an infeasible project.

For some time after, I was in distress because I believed that I didn’t have the knowledge, resources, or time to make a difference in environmental robotics during high school. However, I realized that if I couldn't make an impact by creating a robot, then I could make a difference by inspiring other students to join the fascinating field of environmental robotics. After brainstorming some solutions with Dr. Buisson, I decided to apply my research to make an educational game, which would communicate what I’ve learned about agricultural robotics to other students.

After working on the game for over a year, I have completed it and am now ready to publish both my research and the game. Through this initiative, I strengthened my passion and knowledge for environmental robotics. This AgBotics initiative has also propelled some of my other initiatives, like an environmental tech organization (Cypol Technologies, https://cypoltech.com/). However, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is the importance of communicating knowledge to peers. After all, scientific research is not meant to be hoarded or held onto, it’s meant to diffuse to others so that more people can work on achieving a common goal.

Now, I am excited to start reaching out to schools and hosting workshops to introduce AgBotics and convey what I’ve learned about this game-changing field!

What Is AgBotics?

AgBotics consists of two things: a research report on agricultural robotics and an educational game that serves to communicate this knowledge to a wider audience. The main purpose of this project is to show how essential these robotic technologies are for improving the quality and sustainability of farming.

For the research report, I worked with Crimson mentor Dr. David Buisson to explore agricultural production, agricultural management, and livestock management. First, I researched Iron Ox’s indoor smart food system, which uses robots to streamline farming processes. Then, I explored precision agriculture, which consists of efficient farming technologies like drones and agricultural robots. Afterward, I investigated the key steps in agricultural management: First, farmers must prepare the land and plant the crops. Second, they monitor the crop yield from each location and apply varying chemicals based on the yield. Third, they evaluate how effective these chemicals were and make necessary adjustments. Besides these three main steps, there are technologies to make irrigation more effective and combine the data from each of these processes into one comprehensive interface. After agricultural management, I researched the techniques used to manage livestock that are employed by Halter Technologies.

Using this research, I made a simulation on Greenfoot, which is composed of three levels where the player is a farmer that must obtain enough money by planting and selling crops. In the first round, the player only has access to basic farming tools and crops, like a pickaxe and wheat seeds. However, as the player advances to subsequent rounds, they gain more efficient tools like pesticides, fertilizers, drones, agricultural robots, and control systems, which enable the farmer to earn much more money.

Conclusion

To learn more about the exciting impact of robotics in agriculture, I would love for interested readers to first peruse the research article. Then, I would recommend taking a look at the video tutorial, which walks through the AgBotics simulation. Finally, I encourage them to give the AgBotics simulation a try on the Greenfoot website and see how far they get! If they have any questions, I would be happy to connect through LinkedIn. Thank you!