A University of Winnipeg research project has received a $250,000 Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant.
The project will examine ways to train a computer to recognize and tend for prairie crops. To do this, the system would need to access extensive examples of plants and weeds.
“The main goal of our research project is to develop the means to automatically generate and label these images through a computer controlled camera system. We will then make the images publicly available for use by Canadian researchers and companies, because the fastest way to innovation is to get this data into the hands of more innovators,” said UWinnipeg physics professor, Dr. Christopher Bidinosti.
The research team includes experts from UWinnipeg, Red River College, the University of Saskatchewan, Northstar Robotics, Sightline Innovation, the Canola Council of Canada, and Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers.
The Weston Seeding Food Innovation Grant provides seed funding for interdisciplinary research or technology development to help accelerate solutions to sustainable food challenges, with a focus on food production, distribution and consumption initiatives that primarily impact Canadians, but also deliver key learning toward issues of global concern.
Source : Steinbachonline