NCSU-USDA Hack-a-Thon

Center for Environmental Farming SystemsNorth Carolina State UniversityCampus Box 7609Raleigh, NC 27695-7609919-513-0954https://cefs.ncsu.edu/Email:cefs_info@ncsu.eduNC State UniversityandN.C. A&T State Universitywork in tandem, along with federal, state and local governments, to form a strategic partnership called N.C. Cooperative Extension, which staffs local offices in all 100 counties and with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.Read ourPrivacy StatementN.C. Cooperative Extension prohibits discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and veteran status.Individuals with disabilities are invited to request reasonable accommodations to participate in Extension sponsored programs and events. Please contact the county Extension office offering the program at least 14 days prior to the event to make arrangements.

Center for Environmental Farming Systems

Join us for the NCSU-USDA Ag tech Hack-a-thon to accelerate agricultural sustainability using computer vision, robotics and more

Two Different Event Locations: 1) Mary Anne Fox Labs at NC State and 2) All Virtual through Gathertown and Discord. You can choose your location when you register.

The event will center around uses of the new BenchBot, a low cost robot intended as a generalizable platform for sensing growing plants on greenhouse benches. The robot also serves as a testbed for new sensors intended for field applications. Three of these robots will be housed in the new Plant Sciences Building, a new $160 million project at NCSU that will foster interdisciplinary research on agriculture’s largest challenges. Teams may build off of the innovative solutions developed for the recent <a href="https://github.com/precision-sustainable-ag/OpenCV_Competition2021" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">OpenCV competition</a>.Multiple cash prizes will be available for teams in multiple categories. You must be a student enrolled at the undergraduate or graduate level to participate. For those participating in person, refreshments and lunch will be provided both days.Target Descriptions:Target 1: Teams of 1 to 3 people
This target is specifically designed for electrical and computer engineers, but if you are curious about the new tech in computer vision you also can join the teams to explore, learn, and have a lot of fun. You will be in contact with one of the newest AI systems to make a low-cost, scalable and simple solution for digital agriculture. This system should use a Single Board Computer (SBC) Raspberry Pi 4 and one of the most impressive AI (RGB+D) cameras on the market.
 
Target 2: Teams of 1 to 3 people
This target is designed for data scientists in any shape and form wanting to apply your machine learning and computer vision skills to real use cases. You’ll be introduced to an extensive annotated agricultural image dataset, and compete in bending the natural limitations to achieve the most accurate prediction model(s). We will provide a loaded cloud server for each team, ready for you to unfold your wild ideas and state of the art methods.
 
Target 3: Any team size allowed
This target is specifically designed for biology and agriculture students without a background in computer science or electrical engineering. You will receive training on a drag and drop system (roboflow) for doing Machine Learning and then load the trained algorithm into a web application. This target is less of a competition and more of a hands-on learning experience. Who knows though, maybe someone comes up with something unique and we’ll give out a prize.

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