Agricultural robot garners honors at MassRobotics challenge
In a photo finish, a robot built at BU in the waning weeks of the spring semester notched a place in the 2025 Robotics Summit & Expo’s collegiate competition. Judges at the MassRobotics event were so impressed by Kaedin Kurtz’s AgroBot, an automated produce picker, that they created a new Honorable Mention for it, after mulling a third-prize tie.
Global trade uncertainty, food insecurity, and arable land scarcity inspired Kurtz (ENG’25) to develop an automated grow bed harvesting system. The picker is a gantry-mounted, cylindrical robot designed to travel on rails set up between lines of crops, ideally in a semi-structured environment, such as a greenhouse. In addition to a soft-robotic gripper that can gently pluck tomatoes and other produce off the vine, the machine is equipped with a camera system, and a laser imaging, detection, and ranging (LIDAR) system. A custom computer vision model allows the picker to recognize fruit that is overripe or damaged.
Kurtz’s robot was one of 15 from around the globe entered in the Form & Function University Robotics Challenge at the expo in Boston. MassRobotics had asked entrants to create a robot that “looks good (form) and works (function).” Worth noting: the robot that finally took third place had been under development for more than a year, whereas Kurtz had begun work on AgroBot less than two months before the competition.
Such a sprint was possible because of the resources available to students at BU, such as the Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC). “RASTIC has really been an indispensable tool in the creation of this robot and my iterative process,” says Kurtz. It was at RASTIC that he sourced many of the difficult-to-find and expensive tools he used for AgroBot’s electrical connectors, cabling, and motor calibration. “RASTIC has really cemented itself as the perfect place to prototype projects.”
The Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) was another key facility. “I spent probably 150 hours in EPIC this semester, fabricating the frame of my robot, CNC’ing the metal components, and gaining all of the knowledgeable support to fill in the gaps of my own understanding,” Kurtz says.
Kurtz believes that indoor farming might be the future of sustainable agriculture, and that technological solutions such as his might help it scale up. That’s why he plans to continue developing and pitching AgroBot. “I am not stopping any time soon,” says Kurtz, who received positive feedback from agricultural tech company representatives at the robotics expo.
“I am absolutely sure that we will not only be making a version two with a complete overhaul in mechanics and design, but I will be expanding the functionality by using multispectral cameras to get insight into plant health and ripeness, and incorporating soil nutrient sensing to get a fuller picture of a crop system,” says Kurtz. “I look forward to showing the world what I can create, and hopefully changing the world for the better.”