DAVID C. SLAUGHTER, Professor
Current Research
Professor Slaughter's research interests focus on the development of sensors, instrumentation and robotics for biological and agricultural systems and on postharvest engineering systems for the improvement of quality in agricul-tural commodities.
Recent research has resulted in the development of several intelligent sensing systems for weed control and precise application of agricultural chemicals. Two computer vision systems have been developed, one for precision guidance of agricultural implements used in row crop cultural practices, and a second for precision herbicide applica-tion along roadways or irrigation canals. The first system allows improved control of tools used in non-chem-ical weed control and accurate placement of narrow band applications of fungicides and insecticides. The second system allows agricultural chemicals to be applied only to the targeted plant tissue, minimizing dispersion of excess chemical into the environment. A robotic system for automatic weed control within the seedline of row crops is also being developed. This new system will eliminate the drudgery and high cost of hand hoeing.
Research in postharvest engineering has resulted in the development of improved packaging techniques to mitigate the damage caused in-transit. A recent study determined that shipping Bartlett pears in polyethylene bags resulted in significantly less vibration induced injury than shipping pears in traditional tight-fill or tissue wrapped packages. The study also resulted in the characterization of the cross-country transit vibration environment, allowing researchers to accurately simulate damaging transit vibration conditions in the laboratory.
New near infrared based sensing techniques have been developed to allow the non-destructive assessment of internal quality parameters such as sugar content and total solids content. One application of this technique has re-sulted in the development of a sensor that can predict the ripe quality potential of kiwifruit that are harvested at a mature but unripe stage. Work with colored light emitting diodes has resulted in new, low cost ripeness sensors for bananas and tomatoes and a low cost sensor for oil quality degradation during frying.
Representative Recent Publications
Pearson, T. C. and D. C. Slaughter. 1996. Machine vision detection of early split pistachio nuts. Transactions of the ASAE 39(3):1203-1207.
Slaughter, D. C., J. F. Thompson and R. T. Hinsch. 1996. Packaging Bartlett pears in polyethylene film bags to reduce vibration injury in-transit. American Society of Agricultural Engineers Paper No. 96-6034.
Vijayan, J., D. C. Slaughter and R. P. Singh. 1996. Optical properties of corn oil during frying. International Journal of Food Science and Tech-nology 31:353-358.
Lee, W. S., D. C. Slaughter and D. K. Giles. 1996. Development of a machine vision system for weed control using precision chemical applica-tion. Proceedings of International Conference on Agricultural Machinery Engineering '96, Seoul, Korea. pp. 802-811.
Slaughter, D. C., D. Barrett and M. Boersig. 1996. Nondestructive determination of soluble solids in tomatoes using near infrared spectros-copy. Journal of Food Science 61(4):695-697.
Li, M., D. C. Slaughter and J. F. Thompson 1997. Optical chlorophyll sensing system for banana ripening. Postharvest Biology and Technol-ogy.
Slaughter, D. C., P. Chen and R. G. Curley. 1997. Computer vision guidance system for precision cultivation. American Society of Agricul-tural Engineers Paper No 97-1079.
Ehsani, M. R., S. K. Upadhyaya, D. Slaughter, S. Shafii and M. Pelletier. 1997. Sensing soil mineral-N using a NIR technique. American So-ciety of Agricultural Engineers Paper No. 97-1038.