Pittsburgh-Created Robots Pick Off Spotted Lanternflies

PITTSBURGH, PA — Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute has developed an autonomous robot to control the spread of spotted lanternflies. They lanternfly is an invasive insect that feeds on more than 100 host plants and leaves them vulnerable to fatal diseases.

TartanPest uses an all-electric tractor, a robotic arm and computer vision to detects and destroy spotted lanternfly egg masses. The egg masses, usually containing 30-50 eggs that often are found on trees, rocks, outdoor furniture and metal surfaces, are laid in the fall and hatch in the spring.

"Currently, spotted lanternflies are concentrated in the eastern portion of the nation, but they are predicted to spread to the whole country," Carolyn Alex, a TartanPest team researcher, said in a statement. "By investing in this issue now, we will be saving higher costs in the future."

TartanPest was created by mounting a robotic arm to the base of an all-electric Amiga microtractor created by California-based robotics company Farm-ng. TartanPest relies on an augmented image data set created from 700 images of spotted lanternfly egg masses from iNaturalist to identify them and scrape them off surfaces.