Case File2020

PalmSpector — Robotic Monitoring for Date Palm Health

NYU Abu Dhabi · with Imperial College London IDE

CHALLENGE

Red Palm Weevil larvae feed internally, leaving almost no external symptoms until the tree is beyond saving.

MY CONTRIBUTION

Built the multimodal field data collector and automated the inspection path on Clearpath Husky — sensor fusion, SLAM under canopy, and Gazebo simulation for plantation-scale monitoring.

OUTCOME

Field-validated acoustic trunk probing and multimodal capture that lets farmers target inspection instead of blanket pesticide treatment.

Narrative

Integrated robotic monitoring system for early Red Palm Weevil detection at the scale of UAE date plantations — fusing acoustic, thermal, and RGB sensing so hidden larval infestations can be flagged before trunk collapse, then handing farmers targeted trees for inspection rather than blanket pesticide treatment.

System Record

My role: CONTRIBBuilt CONTRIBSystem Integration CONTRIBField Testing
Domain: DOMAINPerception & Sensing DOMAINAerial · Ground · Underwater Robotics
Application: APPAgriculture Monitoring
Laboratory
Platforms: PLATFORMClearpath Husky PLATFORMGazebo
Methods: METHODSensor Fusion METHODSLAM METHODThermal Imaging METHODDeep Learning
Outcomes: OUTCOMEDeployed Prototype
Period: 2020

Development & Validation

Built a sensor-fusion field data collector around a single-board computer: thermal and RGB cameras, contact microphone, GPS-RTK, storage, and a Healthy/Infested UI so every tree sample follows the same acquisition protocol for supervised deep learning.
Field-validated acoustic trunk probing and multimodal capture across date plantations, addressing the core challenge that RPW larvae feed internally and leave almost no external symptoms until it is too late to save the tree.
Automated the inspection path on a Clearpath Husky UGV platform — SLAM with RGB-D sensing under palm canopy, plus Gazebo/RViz simulation of row navigation — so the same sensing stack can scale from handheld surveys to thousands of trees.

Credits & Collaborators

Nikolaos Giakoumidis
NYU Abu Dhabi
System integration · field sensing
Imperial College London · Innovation Design Engineering (IDE)
Research partner
NYU Abu Dhabi
Host institution

Related projects

Photos

View down a sandy access road through a dense UAE date palm plantation, with rows of textured trunks and arching green fronds forming a canopy tunnel — DATE PLANTATION — FIELD CORRIDOR

Handheld acrylic sensor-fusion data collector with blue 3D-printed brackets, Raspberry Pi, GPS dome antenna, and clipped contact microphone resting in dry field grass — DATA COLLECTOR — THERMAL · RGB · AUDIO

Field operator placing a contact microphone into a crevice of a date palm trunk while holding the clear acrylic PalmSpector data-collector enclosure — TRUNK SENSING — ACOUSTIC RPW PROBE

Challenge, contribution, and outcome