UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Long He, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and colleagues in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences recently received a 2024 Superior Paper Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for their research project titled, “An Advanced Robotic System for Precision Chemical Thinning of Apple Blossoms.” 

The work, published by the society in July of 2023, was recognized this year at the society's annual international meeting on July 29 in Anaheim, California 

He, corresponding author of the winning project, has focused his research group’s work over the last decade on developing robotic approaches to labor-intensive agricultural tasks such as fruit thinning, fruit tree pruning, fruit tree nursery heating and mushroom picking. The robotic system for precision chemical thinning of apple blossoms research was led by Xinyang Mu, first author on the paper who recently earned a doctoral degree in agricultural and biological engineering.

Also contributing to the study from Penn State were Paul Heinemann, professor of agricultural and biological engineering; James Schupp, professor of pomology; Minghui Zhu, professor of electrical engineering and computer science; and Magni Hussain, graduate student in agricultural and biological engineering. Manoj Karkee, professor of biological systems engineering at Washington State University, also contributed.