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Parikshit Maini wins NSF CAREER Award
He was recognized for developing robotic systems that help drones and ground robots work together to improve crop monitoring and precision farming.
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Bhavana P - Tue, 04, Aug 2026
- 18:22 EDT
- 30
Parikshit Maini / Nevada Today | University of Nevada
Indian-origin computer scientist Parikshit Maini has received a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to advance research on cooperative robotic systems for precision agriculture.
An assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, Maini was granted $618,201 to advance his research in multi-robot systems for precision agriculture, developing technologies that enable drones and autonomous ground robots to work together to monitor crops, collect data and apply targeted treatments.
His project, titled "From Fields to Decisions: Planning and Sensing Cooperative Teams of Air and Ground Robots in Precision Agriculture," aims to help farmers reduce fertilizer and pesticide use while improving crop evaluation, particularly in arid regions such as Nevada.
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The project addresses key challenges in multi-robot coordination, including battery limitations, communication failures and uncertainty in task execution. Maini's team is also developing coordinated sensing capabilities that combine aerial and ground-level perspectives to create comprehensive plant models for assessing crop health.
While the immediate application is agriculture, Maini said the underlying technologies have broader potential in areas such as defense, infrastructure inspection and planetary exploration.
“Agriculture is a very important application, because it directly relates to what we eat,” Maini told university press .
Beyond the CAREER project, Maini collaborates with researchers at the university's College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources on RoboHydra, a robotic platform that supports grazing sheep by providing water, tracking livestock and monitoring animal health. He has also contributed to CowBot, an autonomous robotic mower designed for rangeland weed management.
Maini is actively involved in robotics education and outreach, mentoring student teams, supporting 4-H youth programs and engaging with schools through summer camps. As part of the CAREER Award, he also plans to develop a new interdisciplinary curriculum integrating robotics, artificial intelligence and agriculture while expanding hands-on learning opportunities for future engineers and roboticists.
Maini earned his doctorate in computer science and engineering from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi in 2020, and joined the University of Nevada, Reno in 2023.
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