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Lecture | March 18 | 12-1 p.m. | 250 Sutardja Dai Hall Speaker/Performer: Stavros G. Vougioukas, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, UC Davis Sponsor: CITRIS (Ctr for Info Technology Research in the Interest of Society) Abstract Mechanizing the hand harvesting of fresh market crops constitutes one of the biggest challenges to the sustainability of the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry. Depending on the crop, labor contributes up to 60% of the variable production cost and recent labor shortages have led to loss of production and reduction of planted acreage in several crops. Innovation is desperately needed in the design of mechanical/robotic harvesters and harvest-aid machines for delicate fresh-market crops. This talk will discuss the challenges involved, and will present new approaches toward model-based design and control of high-throughput harvesting systems, which are inspired by robotics and automation science. Speaker Biography Stavros Vougioukas is an assistant professor of agricultural robotics and automation. He joined the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at UC Davis in 2012. Before that, he was faculty at Aristotle University, Greece. He has a Ph.D. in Robotics and Automation from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, where he studied under a Fulbright scholarship.