Under the leadership of Associate Professor Dr. Cengiz Tepe from Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) Faculty of Engineering, an artificial intelligence-supported agricultural tool has been developed that can distinguish between wild plants and perform spraying.
The artificial intelligence-supported unmanned agricultural vehicle developed within Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) can autonomously perform tasks such as tilling, detecting weeds, and spraying in agricultural fields. The OMU-TAR team, led by Associate Professor Dr. Cengiz Tepe from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at OMU, designed this vehicle together with seven engineering students.
This autonomous agricultural vehicle, equipped with domestic software and hardware, can determine the locations of plants using GPS and effectively work in areas inaccessible to large agricultural machinery. The vehicle won second place in the Agricultural Unmanned Ground Vehicles category at TEKNOFEST in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Dr. Tepe emphasized that one of the vehicle's most important features is its autonomous movement capability and stated that it can detect weeds using AI-based image processing. He also mentioned that various agricultural tasks can be carried out by adding spraying, seed spreading, and fertilization attachments to the vehicle.
Student Elanur İmirgi expressed that they have integrated their developed algorithms into the vehicle to enhance its autonomous features, aiming for first place next year. Samet Eren Çelik noted that providing autonomous driving in agriculture would increase efficiency for farmers.
Dr. Tepe mentioned that they aim for the vehicle to transition to commercial mass production to reach both farmers in Turkey and the international market.
Source: CNNTÜRK