ROCKVILLE, Ind. — The race is on to develop unmanned seeding equipment.

The focus of the 2016 agBOT Challenge set for May 2016 will feature some of the nation’s most advanced robotics teams competing to develop hardware, software, sensors and human-machine control interfaces that enable seeding equipment to be driven remotely, while providing data to better manage the process. In order to promote the event, Steve Gerrish, president of airBridge, one of the event’s sponsors, has created a new website at www.agbot.ag

“We’re excited to get the information out of the public,” he said. “We’ve been at this for several years and we’re now seeing it become a reality.”

The site provides an overview of the challenge, a section on becoming a sponsor, information for exhibitors, a blog and contact information for teams vying for more than $100,000 in prize money.

So far 20 robotics teams have entered but both Gerrish and John Conley, airBridge’s vice president of business development, hope to attract other teams interested in developing easier ways for farmers to analyze and memorialize data and transmit it through generations. In other words, they aren’t looking for something that looks like your father’s two-row – or even 20-row – corn planter.

“The device we’re looking for doesn’t need to be very big,” they said. “We’re looking for devices smaller than a horse or a cow that will revitalize agriculture production.”

The challenge is to produce unmanned, robotic equipment that will use BATS mobile tracking antennae (www.extendingbroadband.com); provide real-time data and video; stream video from both the front and rear of the agBOT to provide analytics; provide data storage for video and observation and analytical data; use either open or protected source to control mechanical and electrical hardware; and plant an assigned specific GPS location in two 30-inch rows.

It should also be able to: plant a total of 12 rows, each half a mile long; add fertilizer to all 12 rows 2 inches over and zero inches down from seed; and have the ability to dock and load two separate varieties of seed, while both weighing and communicating in stream; be capable of observing and reporting down pressure, seed weight, seed rate, fertilizer weight, fertilizer rate, speed, direction and global positioning.

The device should be capable of intervening with and controlling seed rate, seed tender hopper, fertilizer tender, seedling variety, fertilizer rate, speed, direction, down pressure and data migration from autonomous robotic planter to base station where it will be saved.

The device should be capable of perform-ing analytics of speed and direction, seed hopper weight versus existing seed variety weight, speeding rate versus reduction in seed hopper rate, down pressure, press wheel pressure, variety placement and fertilizer placement, expected versus observed. Gerrish said the technology already exists in agriculture, defense and automotive industries, but it hasn’t been combined into one piece of equipment.

Participating teams will meet at his 400-acre farm near Rockville early in 2016 to demonstrate their robots. “Farmers will see that they can plant the volume they always have,” he added, “but it will be in a different way.”