��ֱ����

Technology already exists to make robots a farmer’s best friend, but it comes with a cost, and a big price tag. 

James Kemeshi, a doctoral student in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at South ��ֱ���� State University, is doing something about that.  

The base price for a commercial agricultural robot with remote control functions sells for $13,000. Kemeshi, who is studying under assistant professor Young Chang, has built a prototype for under $2,500 in production costs. His ModagRobot was under development for less than a year and is to be made autonomous in the coming school year. 

Kemeshi already is going places with the robot, securing top spots in a couple local competitions and publishing an original research paper in AgriEngineering in March. 

While he expects to eventually profit from his knowledge, Kemeshi said his initial interest for ModagRobot (modular agricultural robot) is the advancement of knowledge. “Hopefully, this influences robot manufacturers …. This is a way to tell the industry there is a way they can reduce their costs,” said Kemeshi, whose SDSU experience began in late August 2022. 

Why pay more? 

Of course, a private manufacturer has costs that a grad student working in a lab in the Raven Precision Agriculture Center doesn’t incur, but Kemeshi said great savings can be obtained by using less expensive parts that function equally well. 

For example, on a previous robot which he developed, he tested the performance of a YOLOv8 model using a $110 camera and a $40 camera and found no statistical difference. Likewise, a $60 or $70 brushless direct current motor that is used in hoverboards and electrical bicycles compared favorably to $300-$500 motors found on some commercial robots. 

Kemeshi’s summer project is adapting his ModagRobot for agricultural spraying. 

In addition to its cost advantage, Kemeshi said another advantage his robot offers are its modular design and its multiple uses. “With my robot you can harvest, spray and phenotype,” he said of his anticipated final product. Phenotyping helps breeders identify genotypes with desirable traits like high yield, disease resistance and seed quality, which can be used to develop new and improved varieties. 

Dual use camera 

In fact, the formal title of his project is “Development and Field Assessment of a Modular Agricultural Robotic System for Soybean Phenotyping Using an RGBD Sensor.” 

The sensor not only is a camera allowing the operator to capture red-green-blue (full-color) images to indicate quality and growth stages, it also captures depth information, which could be used to measure leaf or stem thickness or crop height, he explained. 

ModagRobot has no welded parts. “You can adjust ground clearance, width, and height for different crops by changing one or two components,” said Kemeshi, who developed his interest in agricultural robots while studying for his bachelor’s degree in agricultural and bioresources at Federal University of Technology in his native Nigeria. 

As now designed, it can be adjusted from a width of 23 to 39 inches and a height of 5 foot, 8 inches to about 8 feet, allowing it to safely move over crop rows without causing crop damage. 

“I’m deeply passionate about creating cost-effective agricultural robots that empower small-scale farmers to adopt robotic solutions on their farms,” Kemeshi said. In fact, that is what brought him to SDSU. 

Paired with new professor 

After he earned his bachelor’s degree in 2018, he worked a year as a graduate assistant at the University of Agriculture in Umudike, Nigeria, and then did part-time and freelance graphic design work before deciding to pursue a doctoral in ag engineering. He went to Google to find a professor who shared his interest in agricultural robots. 

He found a match in Young Chang, who at the time was a biosystems automation research chair at Dalhousie University in Canada. 

But Chang was headed to SDSU and invited Kemeshi to join him because Chang wanted to conduct research on cost-effective agricultural robots as soon as he started his new position.  

Chang said he has found Kemeshi to be a good fit for robot design and fabrication. He added he also was impressed with Kemeshi’s transition to SDSU. “We stayed in the same house during the first month, which helped us get to know each other even though we had quite different cultural backgrounds. Later, it really helped with doing research together.” 

Kemeshi said, “Agriculture in Nigeria is quite behind when it comes to robotics and farm machinery” and that he had initial homesickness during his initial weeks in Brookings.  

But that was short-lived. “The reception was warm. I felt really like I was not far away from home. I met friends that want you to succeed. The faculty wants you to reach your maximum potential. I soon developed a social network and met my wife here in August 2022.” 

2025: Three-minute thesis, starts family 

Kemeshi’s wife, Anne Carolyne Mendonca Cidreira, came to SDSU as a doctoral student in agricultural and biosystems engineering after earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in chemical engineering in her native Brazil. She has worked on a coating material for fertilizers that allow the nutrients to be released based on the plant’s requirement, thus reducing fertilizer runoff and decreasing the need for frequent fertilizing. 

Cidreira will complete her doctorate in August. Kemeshi is looking at an August 2026 completion. 

They both participated in a poster competition for the South ��ֱ���� section of the American Society of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineers in April. Kemeshi placed first and Cidreira third. He also won the ag and biosystems engineering department’s Three-Minute Thesis competition in 2024 and was runner-up in SDSU’s Three-Minute Thesis competition in 2024 and 2025. 

To explain his technical work to a nontechnical audience in three minutes, used an analogy from the movie “Transformers.” “What if you had one vehicle that could convert to a sedan, truck or SUV depending on your needs? This is what we’re trying to do with our robot,” he explained. 

But Kemeshi said his biggest transformation came on Feb. 3, when Cidreira gave birth to their son, Daniel. “That really changed my life, and for the better,” he said.