Mirko Usuelli, a student in the Information Technology Ph.D. Programme at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – Politecnico di Milano, has won the Agricultural Technology Excellence Doctoral Prize 2024 for his thesis ‘Enhancing Tractors’ Perception through Multi-Layered Consciousness’.
The Agricultural Technology Excellence Doctoral Prize is an award given by CLAAS, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of agricultural machines, to a Ph.D. student who stands out for the excellence of his or her thesis proposal in the field of agricultural mechanisation. The award is aimed at Ph.D. students from all over the world engaged in the development of agricultural engineering related technologies, to support innovation and technological excellence in the field.
Mirko Usuelli’s doctoral thesis focuses on addressing the challenges associated with Localization and Mapping in GNSS-denied agricultural environments, including orchards, vineyards, and solar panel fields. The goal consists of enhancing tractors' perception through advanced layers of understanding. This approach facilitates the exploration of agricultural landscapes and related phenomena through digitalization, thereby advancing Robotics and Artificial Intelligence applications in agriculture.
The research specifically focuses on developing 4D-SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping in 3D over time) to effectively monitor ongoing crop changes. Incorporating semantic data on plants and soil advances 4D-SLAM towards achieving 5D-SLAM, which aims to generate real-time digital twins of agricultural fields onboard tractors and UGVs.