AgTech Invasive Species Removal
Overview
An AgTech platform that detects and removes invasive species contaminating vineyard harvests. I led an 11-member team from stakeholder outreach and fieldwork through alpha and beta prototypes to a final stakeholder demonstration.
My role
- Organized team meetings, stakeholder outreach, biological research, and fieldwork.
- Built tools to identify and address at-risk workstreams.
- Took ownership of critical gaps: actuation, system power, and full-system integration.
Computer vision
- Developed a YOLO 26 model to identify the pest.
- Procured and curated 4k+ training images with 12k annotations.
- Results: 90% mAP50, 91.2% precision, 83% recall.
Hardware and integration
- Designed a custom 80/20 rack-and-pinion actuator that extends pneumatic coverage through a 12 in stroke under a 1 lb load, enabling positioned targeting of pests.
- Specced and implemented remote power for the full platform.
- Resolved all major full-system integration errors to deliver an operational demonstration to stakeholders.