How can Deep Learning and Robotics transform agriculture? By building a robot that can tell the difference between crops and weeds and then only spray the weeds, AI is revolutionizing agriculture's approach to chemical usage. By outfitting John Deere tractors with perception-based sensors and autonomous driving capabilities, AI is removing farmers from the cab for jobs like tillage (preparing the soil for planting) so they can spend more time doing other value-added tasks on the farm. Blue River Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of John Deere, uses computer vision and deep learning to build intelligent machines that help farmers grow more food more efficiently. The intersection of AI and agriculture is better for the environment, our communities, and farmers’ profitability. In this session, Chris Padwick, Technical Fellow at Blue River, will share how the company solves these machine vision problems using deep learning, and some of the specific challenges along the way (such as dust interference and the visual similarities between weeds and crops). We will deep dive into the tech stack, including on-premise compute, image augmentations, Int8 quantization tradeoffs, and use of synthetic data to improve model performance. Join us for an amazing session!

Speaker

Chris Padwick Director of Computer Vision Machine Learning Blue River Technology (United States)

Chris Padwick joined Blue River Technology in 2016 as the first machine learning engineer for the See and Spray product. He led the machine learning team to develop See and Spray which was released to customers in 2022.  This year over 5 million acres have been treated using See and Spray, resulting in herbicide savings of 50% and over 32M gallons of herbicide tank mix not sprayed. Chris has received numerous awards and 13 patents related to the See and Spray product. Before Blue River, he worked in the remote sensing industry for 12 years at Maxar, MDA, and ITT VIS, holding various roles. Chris has an M.Sc. degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of British Columbia.

 

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Event Details

FORMAT: Oral presentation followed by audience Q&A.
MENU: Coffee, decaf, tea and water will be available nearby.
SETUP: Theater seating.