U of M licenses technology to monitor crop nitrogen to ag-tech firm Sentera
Feb. 27, 2018
Sentera, a Minneapolis-based supplier of technology solutions to the agriculture industry, has signed an agreement to bring University of Minnesota-developed corn nitrogen deficiency technology to the market...
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$10M in private support will fund new robotics labs
June 21, 2017
Work will begin this winter on renovating the first two floors of Shepherd Laboratories building for robotics research, thanks to $10M in private support.
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Lab Featured in RCJudge
May 11, 2017
Dr. Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, is the director of the Center for Distributed Robotics in Minnesota. He along with several others work on specialized robots which can adapt to their surroundings
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SUAV:Q featured in New Scientist
February 24, 2017
A shape-shifting drone takes off like a helicopter and transforms into a plane in mid-air to fly all day on solar power. The drone is designed to provide affordable aerial surveys for farmers, so they can see where to irrigate and use fertiliser and herbicide only where needed.
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Lab Director Awarded McKnight Professorship
August 22, 2016
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Professor Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos has been awarded the prestigious McKnight Presidential Professorship by University President Eric Kaler. The professorship is among the highest honors for faculty at the University.
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The long term milestone for this project has two significant and independent components that must be fully integrated into a single aircraft. The first is to achieve continuous flight, which is accomplished when the aircraft is able to sustain flight only through the use of solar power captured through solar cells. The second goal is the ability to transmit images and video as well as receive instructions through the 4G cellular network. These combine to result in an aircraft that is completely untethered to a ground location and is able to gather and relay valuable visual information anywhere in the world through the Internet.
Scott Morton, Luke Scharber and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos "Solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle for continuous flight: Conceptual overview and optimization" IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2013