Student team wins award at Farm Robotics Challenge

A team of computer science and mechanical engineering students from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities won the 2025 Excellence in Small Farm Technology award at the Farm Robotics Challenge, a national competition for college-level student teams tackling real-world agricultural problems using advanced robotics.

The University of Minnesota team’s design project, titled “FarmGuard’s Multi-Robot Deer Deterrence System,” aims to scare deer away from farms to prevent loss in crops.

The FarmGuard autonomous drone system helps farmers detect deer and deters them from eating the crops. This could increase the productivity of local farms, specifically targeting the needs of small, sustainable farms. 

“One of the farmers who we worked with is losing, on average, 30 percent of his crops per year from deer,” says Mario Jerez, a computer science PhD student and FarmGuard team member. “That really puts in perspective how big the problem is.”

The FarmGuard drone uses onboard cameras and computer vision algorithms to detect deer in real-time, both day and night, and employs deterrents such as lights and speakers. It also uses optimized flight paths to maximize coverage while minimizing energy consumption. The team designed self-charging capabilities for continuous overnight protection.

The team reached out to farmers first to find everyday problems that they faced, before coming up with their idea of using the autonomous drone system. Traditional deer deterrents like fencing and mesh are expensive and only moderately effective. The FarmGuard project seeks to provide a more reliable and cost-effective solution to protect crops from damage caused by deer. 

“Understanding that the students needed to talk to real people to solve real problems was an important part of this challenge,” says Maria Gini, College of Science and Engineering Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and advisor for the project.

With the Excellence in Small Farms Technology award comes a $5,000 prize to support further testing and development of their project on real deer. The National AI Research Institute for Land, Economy, Agriculture & Forestry provided the team with the resources needed to build the drone for this challenge. The Minnesota Robotics Institute also helped with facilities and materials to support these drones.