Planning: ERISE: Increasing Mississippi’s Research Capacity in Autonomous Agricultural Machines for Food Security and Upskilling Farm Work

Farm-worker availability is declining. Autonomous agricultural machines are critical to food security and the upskilling of manual farm work. This planning project will facilitate subsequent work to improve research infrastructure.

The project will accomplish this goal through the establishment of a research consortium that will facilitate jurisdiction-wide improvements in Mississippi's research infrastructure. The establishment of the research consortium subsequently will facilitate the development of STEM faculty and students in engineering, agricultural/biosystems, computer science, and agronomic disciplines.

This will thereby allow the participants to research and develop autonomous solutions to agricultural problems where labor is essential but unavailable. The final, fully developed project has potential to innovate STEM-education opportunities for K-12 and post-secondary students and develop the workforce by creating high-tech jobs in agriculture. The jurisdiction and project team members will have increased physical and human capacity for research in autonomous agricultural machines.

The project will support the nation in being better able to provide for national and global food needs and advancing in becoming a world leader in this type of research. Mississippi State University will lead the planning efforts to develop this project, through engagement with ten collaborating partners. These statewide partners include universities (Alcorn State, Belhaven, Delta State, Jackson State, and Mississippi Valley State), colleges (Tougaloo), and community colleges (East Mississippi, Mississippi Delta, Northwest Mississippi, and Northeast Mississippi).

Autonomous agricultural machines include aerial and terrestrial robots and teams performing agricultural tasks. They are critical to food security, considering the declining availability of farm workers. The planning activities for this project include cataloging existing infrastructure to support autonomous agriculture needs across the state, catalyzing the development of a jurisdiction-wide consortium, and a series of jurisdiction-wide meetings to facilitate long-term project development.

The potential intellectual contributions of the fully developed E-RISE project include integrating advanced technologies to produce worker-robot farming systems; mechanics and end-effectors for agricultural robots; communication and AI-based computation in remote, rural environments; and accurate perception and decision-making in agricultural fields. Additionally, related infrastructure and human talent will be improved across Mississippi, including enhancements to computing facilities, internet capacity, and project-specific data sharing capabilities to advance simulation for autonomous systems, creation of digital twins, and development of AI for autonomous detection and decision-making.

Project plans involve hiring faculty and coordination staff to ensure progress and maintain timelines. The breadth of participants in both the planning stage and the fully developed stage of the project potentially will lead to heightened research capacity integrated with training and education across multiple institutions including universities, colleges, and community colleges, most being Historically Black Colleges and Universities or Minority-Serving Institutions.

This project is funded by the NSF EPSCoR Research Incubators for STEM Excellence (E-RISE) Research Infrastructure Improvement Program. The E-RISE RII Program supports the development of sustainable research infrastructure capacity in EPSCoR jurisdictions through hypothesis-driven or problem-driven research and workforce development to improve competitiveness in a selected STEM field.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.