Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Fire Blighters developed an autonomous ground robot built on the Amiga platform that detects, maps and physically marks fire blight infections in apple orchards. GPS waypoint following and LiDAR localization guide the robot down the rows, while a 6-DOF robotic arm equipped with a light-invariant in-hand camera reaches into occluded parts of the canopy to inspect branches up close. Detected infections are classified by severity and registered in global coordinates to build a spatial disease map of the block. An integrated marking mechanism then physically tags infected trees so pruning crews can act on the data with confidence, slowing the spread of one of the apple industry's most damaging diseases.
More about the challenge here:
farmroboticschallenge.ai
More about the winners here:
farmroboticschallenge.ai/2026results
The Fire Blighters developed an autonomous ground robot built on the Amiga platform that detects, maps and physically marks fire blight infections in apple orchards. GPS waypoint following and LiDAR localization guide the robot down the rows, while a 6-DOF robotic arm equipped with a light-invariant in-hand camera reaches into occluded parts of the canopy to inspect branches up close. Detected infections are classified by severity and registered in global coordinates to build a spatial disease map of the block. An integrated marking mechanism then physically tags infected trees so pruning crews can act on the data with confidence, slowing the spread of one of the apple industry's most damaging diseases.
More about the challenge here:
farmroboticschallenge.ai
More about the winners here:
farmroboticschallenge.ai/2026results
