E-Mail Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology are exploring ways to use drones and artificial intelligence to help farmers and other users assess how well fields of crops are growing. The National Science Foundation awarded Guoyu Lu, an assistant professor in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, more than $583,000 to spearhead the project. The researchers are aiming to create a cost-effective and accurate 3D reconstruction sensing system that can be equipped on unmanned aerial systems. Current systems make use of heavy and expensive 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems, which require big and expensive drones to fly. But by making use of lighter, less expensive 2D LiDAR systems and developing deep neural networks, the researchers hope to bring the cost from about $500,000 for current systems to just a few thousand dollars.