Run With the RoboPack

Today, farmers use precision agriculture to improve crop production and livestock management to ensure a future of sustainable food production. At NC State University, the agricultural robotics student design teams are sharpening their precision design skills to prepare for the future. 

The Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences sends several student teams to compete at the American Society of Biological and Agricultural Engineers’ (ASABE) Annual International Meeting (AIM) every summer. Past meetings have taken place in Houston, Texas, and Anaheim, California.

RoboPack and WOLFadvance are among the teams that travel to AIM every summer. NC State undergraduate students make up the RoboPack team while graduate students compete on the WOLfadvance team. Lirong Xiang, an assistant professor and principal investigator of the Automation and Robotics Lab in BAE, is the current club advisor for both teams.

Xiang founded RoboPack when she joined NC State in 2022. “I first began with a robotics team, and participation tripled in the second year as student interest increased,” Xiang says. 

RoboPack became an official club in 2023 due to this increase in participation and tremendous student interest. Xiang wanted to give graduate students the same opportunity, so she formed WOLFadvance.

Xiang was passionate about creating these teams because NC State didn’t have an agricultural robotic design team when she came to the university. When she was an undergraduate student at Zhejiang University in China, she traveled to compete at AIM. Xiang’s personal knowledge about how valuable the competition is for young students drove her to make a place for NC State on the competition floor. 

Evelynn Wilcox, the current president of RoboPack, says the club has allowed her to hone her interest in robotic design by participating at AIM. The competition has a variety of different criteria. The main objective is to design and fabricate an autonomous robot capable of performing an agricultural task. 

“During my first year of involvement, the task was mapping and harvesting cotton from a simulated cotton field, but last year the task was mapping and pruning a strawberry field,” says Wilcox, who is a senior majoring in biological engineering with a double concentration in ecological engineering and agricultural engineering.

The first time RoboPack competed in 2023, they won first place. In the 2024 competition, the team placed third. “It’s so fascinating to see students gain new knowledge and use it to solve challenging problems,” Xiang says.

“I have always been interested in programming, part fabrication and robotic design, but never had the opportunity to engage with them prior to RoboPack,” Wilcox says. “My involvement in the club sparked a passion for precision agriculture which has encouraged me to add an agricultural engineering concentration, pursue research in the application of deep learning models, and attend graduate school to further develop my understanding of the field.”

The WOLFadvance team participates in the advanced division where the challenges are more complex. Graduate students on the advanced team design robots capable of navigating uneven terrain.

Zhenghua Zhang is a Ph.D. student and current captain of WOLFadvance. His favorite part of the competition is the process of designing the robot and collaborating with his teammates and advisor to solve challenges. “During this time, we engaged in frequent discussions, explored different options and brainstormed solutions,” says Zhang. “It allowed us to apply theoretical knowledge in practice, which is crucial for engineering students like us.”

These brainstorming sessions proved useful because WOLFadvance won first place in the 2024 competition. “This competition is highly prestigious and challenging,” says Zhang, who is pursuing his doctorate in biological and agricultural engineering. “It is an ideal opportunity to represent NC State BAE students and strive for victory — not just for myself but for the honor of the entire BAE community.”

Xiang explains that both clubs provide excellent platforms to exchange ideas between students with shared interests. She hopes members will go on to become leaders in agricultural robotics. Any NC State student interested in agricultural systems and robotics can join the team. Xiang has hopes of attracting more people to this field, generating innovative designs and ideas for agriculture, enhancing production efficiency through robotics and AI, and ultimately feeding more people.