Dr. Steven Hall holds teaching and research appointments in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Louisiana State University and the LSU Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has degrees in mechanical, agricultural and biological engineering from State University of New York at Buffalo, University of California at Davis and Cornell University. He was the first sustainable agriculture postdoctoral fellow at McGill University in Montreal Canada, and has spent time in research and education in Africa, Europe, Central and North America.

His areas of expertise include aquacultural engineering, biomass energy and compost engineering, energy efficiency and conservation, mechanical and biological systems engineering and instrumentation, ecological economics, resource management engineering, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. He is also a licensed professional engineer in New York and Louisiana.

Dr. Hall has served as national secretary for the Institute for Biological Engineering, and has served as membership chair for the Aquacultural Engineering Society. Other professional affiliations include AAAS, ASAE, ASME and Tau Beta Pi.

Recent research has focused on automation in aquaculture, agriculture and the environment, including automated temperature and aeration control in aerated static pile compost reactors, automated valves for use with geothermal water in aquaculture ponds, automated recirculating systems for aquacultural research and autonomous vehicles for use in agricultural and environmental applications.

By: Steven G. Hall, Ph.D., P.E.

Summary :

Autonomous or self-guided vehicles have been used for a variety of applications. Recent work by the authors has explored use of such devices aquacultural and environmental applications. Many such tasks are challenging and costly for humans. This is especially true in such areas as forests, swamps, lakes and bayous, as well as in large farm fields or aquaculture ponds. Such tasks as scouting for insects, deterring predators or reducing weed species presently require trained humans to traverse long distances in challenging environmental conditions. Monitoring water quality, and other environmental parameters may be quite difficult. Reducing weedy species via physical or chemical means can also be costly, difficult and potentially harmful to the environment. Small, semi-autonomous (self-guided or partially self-guided) vehicles, including boats, tracked or wheeled vehicles or aircraft may help provide solutions to some of these problems. The use of digital microprocessors, online sensors and solar power collectors or energy conserving devices each may play a part in making these devices effective. A series of such devices have been constructed and are being tested. Some successes have included bird predation reduction devices (patent pending) and remote photography equipment, as well as temporally and spatially diverse environmental measurements

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