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Speaker: Mr. Ronald Rieger, Rieger and Milliken Corp., Software Development -
               Systems Integration / California State University Channel Is., Instructor
Date: Tuesday, October 7^th, 2008
Time: 6:30 p.m. pizza provided for meet and greet; 7:00 p.m. Presentation
Location: California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI)
                50 University Drive, Camarillo, CA 93012
                Broome Library room 1756
Directions:See following page with map
RSVP/Contact:e-mail Ben Johnson at bjohnson@a-m-c.com <mailto:bjohnson@a-m-c.com> .

Interactive Technical Review & Forum

This special session is unique in that interdisciplinary technical experts are being invited to participate in discussions and encouraged to make recommendations for automating produce harvesting. Though the need increases yearly, an assortment of researchers have been working on robotic automation of fresh produce harvesting for decades. And yet, no viable, cost-effective approach towards robotic mechanization has arisen. Costs of automating harvesting is based on a number of issues including: picking speed, handling considerations proportional to the delicacy of the produce, mechanization life cycle/reliability, and other overall production overheads.

An open research project to design and develop a robotic strawberry picker prototype has recently been started. The initial team consists of students and faculty from CSUCI and Egris personnel. The plan is to first design a functional simulation and then to develop a field capable prototype. Assuming success, production of the strawberry picker could theoretically be located right here in Ventura County.

This is no easy task however. One of the most difficult problems is simply to select an appropriate, interchangeable, picking ‘hand’ mechanism specifically for strawberries. The challenge, considered more a functional requirement and not just a highly desirable option, is to have interchangeability of the ‘hand’ in order to harvest additional types of row crops such as asparagus. With this in mind, an open review for creative input of overall robot design considerations is being offered to the local public.

Biography

Mr. Rieger has over 30 years experience in high technology activities, management, consulting, and recently university teaching. He is founder/proprietor of his own company and currently is spearheading the setup of a separate non-profit for science education and research. He has designed, implemented and/or been responsible for the development of dozens of system and software products. Mr. Rieger has been a key player in a variety of business management activities including strategic and tactical business planning; new product design and development, performance and/or data analysis, systems integration, and data capture/integration. Mr. Rieger also has extensive experience in DBMS and telecommunications tool design, development and use; embedded systems and other real-time or online systems; specialized languages, and algorithm design and development applied to many different integration activities. After consultation with various video game companies, Mr. Rieger spearheaded the development and implementation of a new multidiscipline minor in video game design and development. Mr. Rieger currently has a patent pending for some of his pattern matching algorithms and procedures.

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society is interested in both applied and theoretical issues in robotics and automation. Robotics here is defined to include intelligent machines and systems used, for example, in space exploration, human services, or manufacturing; whereas automation includes the use of automated methods in various applications, for example, factory, office, home, laboratory automation, or transportation systems to improve performance and productivity.

Robotics and Automation involves designing and implementing intelligent machines that can do work too dirty, too dangerous, too precise or too tedious for humans. It also pushes the boundary on the level of intelligence and capability for many forms of autonomous, semi-autonomous and tele-operated machines. Intelligent machines have applications in medicine, defense, space and underwater exploration, service industries, disaster relief, manufacturing, assembly, entertainment to name a few. Within the foreseeable future, intelligent machines will expand and migrate into many more and other non-traditional places. Robotics and automation is on the move, embrace it!