High School Teams Design Autonomous Tech for Pistachio Growers | Farm Robotics Challenge

Inconsistent tree health and undetected orchard gaps can quietly drain a pistachio grower's seasonal profits. Discover how student innovators designed a coordinated drone and rover network to catch crop stress before it impacts production. In California's Central Valley, pistachio growers manage expansive orchards where monitoring individual tree health is an enormous operational challenge. Traditional, manual row-by-row inspections make it incredibly difficult to spot early-stage irrigation failures, tree stress, or disease outbreaks before they lead to permanent orchard gaps and reduced crop yields. To address this issue, student innovators from the Career Technical Education Charter High School (the CTEC Titans) developed Project C.A.N.O.P.Y.—a coordinated, autonomous multi-robot system designed specifically for precision orchard monitoring. The team's engineering design prototype features a two-tiered robotic approach: -Autonomous Aerial Mapping: An autonomous quadcopter drone surveys the orchard from above, utilizing aerial mapping to quickly scan the canopy and pinpoint areas showing signs of stress or missing trees. -Targeted Ground Inspections: The drone data guides an autonomous ground rover directly to the flagged locations for precise, tree-level visual inspections, capturing high-resolution data without requiring a grower to walk the field. By successfully combining wide-area aerial intelligence with close-up ground verification, this student-led project demonstrates how agricultural robotics and automation can help farmers protect their crops, optimize resources, and catch orchard health issues early. ABOUT THE FARM ROBOTICS CHALLENGE The Farm Robotics Challenge is an international student engineering design competition where university, community college, and high school teams work directly with farmers to identify real agricultural challenges. Teams design, prototype, and field-test innovative solutions integrating farm robots, drones, sensors, cameras, AI-powered software, and precision agriculture technologies. Students gain hands-on experience solving real agricultural challenges while working alongside farmers, industry partners, and faculty mentors. Ready to get involved? Whether you're a student looking to solve real agricultural challenges, an educator interested in mentoring an engineering design team, or an industry partner supporting the future of agriculture, we invite you to join the Farm Robotics Challenge community. Award: Excellence in Specialty Crops Sponsored by Western Growers Explore past projects, receive competition updates and resources, or connect with us using the links below: Explore the 2026 award-winning projects → https://www.farmroboticschallenge.ai/... Get updates for educators and students → https://www.farmroboticschallenge.ai/... Talk to us about being a sponsor → https://www.farmroboticschallenge.ai/... ORGANIZERS: UC ANR Innovate UC ANR Innovate brings together people, resources and ideas to accelerate agricultural, food and biotech innovation in California. UC ANR Innovate develops practical technologies, generates research and policy insights, prepares a future-ready workforce and builds the ecosystems and partnerships that make innovation possible: locally, regionally and globally. The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS) is a USDA-National Institute of Food and Agriculture-funded research institute leveraging artificial intelligence to solve the world’s biggest challenges to crop and food production: ensuring a sustainable, nutritious, efficient and safe food supply while mitigating the impacts of changing conditions. For more information, visit https://aifs.ucdavis.edu. INNOVATION PARTNER The Reservoir The Reservoir is a startup incubator and venture capital fund helping agtech startups succeed in the field. Combining R&D space, hands-on grower input, and early-stage capital, The Reservoir turns promising ideas into practical tools for growers. Learn more at https://reservoir.co. TECHNOLOGY PARTNER Bonsai Robotics Bonsai Robotics is transforming agriculture with an AI-first platform that makes autonomous farming affordable, simple, and deployable across all farm equipment—whether retrofitted or built into next-gen machinery. Learn more at www.bonsairobotics.ai. SPONSORS Morrison Foerster, Western Growers Association, F3 Innovate, Plug and Play, Beck’s, Linak, Bluewhite Morrison Foerster Morrison Foerster is a global law firm representing Food + Agriculture stakeholders across the entire value chain—from plant genetics labs and farm tech pioneers to global CPG brands. With deep sector knowledge and scientific depth, MoFo has shaped the industry for over two decades. Learn more at www.mofo.com. #FarmRoboticsAcademy #CropMonitoring #PistachioOrchards #DroneAndRover #StudentInnovation