Last updated: May 4, 2026

Project Overview



The AI-IADSSCHHM is a fully autonomous crop health monitoring system, designed to provide detailed and easy-to-use metrics on the growth of corn or soybeans, including growth rates, harvest readiness, and disease metrics, all with an easy to use interface and low-price off-the-shelf hardware. It uses a drone to collect visual data from above a field on a regular schedule, then processing data with an AI vision model to classify crops in growth stages and detect problematic areas that have visual indicator of disease, aggregating these and notifying the user of metrics in a frontend application.

The system is designed to be as simple as possible for users. It includes a single unified frontend that can be used to view metrics, configure fields to monitor, configure the drone, and offload data from the drone to the backend for AI processing.

It is also designed to be accessible. The drone build used in the project now can be assembled with off-the-shelf hardware for approximately $650, and the drone pilot software interfaces with any drone that can run the open-source INAV flight control software, meaning it is not locked to specific hardware.

The project consists of a desktop app developed in React, which communicates with a drone running open-source flight control software and a companion computer running our data collection and drone control system to prepare flight plans and load data. The frontend then communicates with a backend developed in C#, which stores data, manages access control, and forwards visual data to a Python-based AI microservice which analyzes them and returns metrics.

As the project stands at the end of our second semester, we have implemented a nearly complete prototype of the full system stack. The backend is completely implemented. We have a functional AI model, however without the ability to collect growth data given the timing of our project the model is not perfect, and would benefit from retraining with data collected from the drone. The drone is able to fly autonomously, and the companion computer is able to control it, but we were unable to perform a complete field test end-to-end due to timing. The flight loop could be improved, and the drone needs more calibration for smoother flight. The frontend implements all necessary features, but can use some user experience improvements and design changes.

System Diagram

Autonomous flight demo

Flight simulator demo

Team Members

Jongmin Lee

AI, Backend

I’m majoring in Software Engineering at Iowa State University, and I’m part of the Drone Automated Crop project team. I’m mainly working on developing the machine learning and computer vision features that allow our drone to detect crop health, identify pests, and analyze field conditions in real time.

Linkedin

Z Harvey

Frontend, Backend

I'm a Software Engineering student minoring in Cyber Security. I have a passion for full stack development and will mainly be focusing on frontend on this project. I have full stack experience from my internship at Metalcraft.

Linkedin

Andres Lopez

Hardware

I am a Computer Engineering student. I am especially interested in computer hardware and embbed system. After graduation, I want work job.

Alex Pallan

Cloud, Security

I'm a Senior studying Cyber Security Engineering student at Iowa State University with a passion for cloud infrastructure and security. I've gained hands-on experience through internships at NBCUniversal and John Deere, as well as my role as Director of IT for Student Government.

LinkedIn

Camden Senneff

Drone SW, Frontend

I am a Software Engineering student @ ISU, minoring in Cybersecurity Engineering. I am especially interested in data engineering, embedded systems, automation, and backend development. After graduation, I will be working as a Software Engineer on the Data team at Hy-Vee.

csenneff.dev

Caleb Zea

Frontend

I am a Software Engineering major at ISU, minoring in Cybersecurity Engineering. I mostly enjoy working on backend development, as well as frontend UI.

Github

Srdan Kopunovic

AI, Backend

I am a Software Engineering student, minoring in Applied Mathematics. I am passionate about database systems and well as data analysis, which are also the sections I am working on for this project.

GitHub


Weekly Reports

Semester 1

Report 1 - 9/10 - 9/17
Report 2 - 9/17 - 10/1
Report 3 - 10/09 - 10/15
Report 4 - 10/16 - 10/22
Report 5 - 10/23 - 10/28
Report 6 - 10/29 - 11/04
Report 7 - 11/05 - 11/11
Report 8 - 11/12 - 11/18
Report 9 - 11/19 - 12/02

Semester 2

Report 10 - 1/22 - 2/07
Report 11 - 2/08 - 2/18
Report 12 - 2/19 - 2/26
Report 13 - 2/27 - 3/12
Report 14 - 3/13 - 3/26
Report 15 - 3/27 - 4/09
Report 16 - 4/10 - 4/23


Design Documents

Final Design Doc

Previous iterations:
Design Doc 1 (Introduction)
Design Doc 2 (Requirements)
Design Doc 3 (Planning)
Design Doc 4 (Proposed Design)
Design Doc 5 (Testing)
Design Doc (Semester 1)

Presentations

Lightning Talk (Prototyping)
491 Final Presentation
492 Final Presentation (Contains demo videos. To watch them, go to the Google Slides presentation.)
ISU Undergraduate Research Symposium Poster
Final Poster


Team Documents

Team Contract