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About Me

I am an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department. I received my Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering from Iowa State University in 2022 under the supervision of Dr. Lie Tang and my B.S. degree in Biosystems Engineering from Zhejiang University in 2017. My research mainly focuses on agricultural robotics, 2D & 3D computer vision, and machine learning. During my Ph.D. program, I worked on developing robotic and automated systems for both indoor and in-field plant phenotyping applications.

I aim to develop smart cyber-physical systems that integrate cutting-edge robotics, machine vision, and machine learning technologies to automate labor-intensive tasks in agricultural systems. My research at NCSU includes:

Developing robotic platforms for weeding, transplanting, and selective harvesting.
Combining ground and aerial robots for in-situ and non-invasive crop sensing.
Adopting AI and robotics tools for precision livestock management.

I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher and fully-funded Ph.D./Master students. If you are interested in our research, please email me with your CV. Undergraduate and high school students interested in robotics, sensors, machine vision, or artificial intelligence are welcome to join us! Feel free to send me an email at lxiang3@ncsu.edu! For more information, click here.

Personnel

Weilong He

Ph.D. Student
whe8@ncsu.edu

Weilong is pursuing a PhD degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at NCSU since 2023. He obtained his B.Eng. in Electronic Information Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology (China) in 2022. Then he started working as a graduate research assistant in the Robotics and Automation Lab. His research interests include agricultural robotics, computer vision, and deep learning applied to the field of agriculture.

Xingjian Li

Ph.D. Student
xli228@ncsu.edu

Xingjian is an undergraduate majoring in Electrical Engineering at NC State University. He will work as a PhD student starting Fall 2024. His interests include image processing and controls for robotics. His lab projects include: Automatic Blueberry Counting and Weight Estimation using Images on Mobile Devices, Industrial Robotic Arm Simulation in Unreal Engine 5 used for Simulating Plant 3D Mesh Reconstruction Process.

Zhenghua Zhang

Ph.D. Student
zzhang99@ncsu.edu

Zhenghua Zhang is a PhD student in the AR lab. He received his B.E. degree from Xi'an Jiaotong University. Zhenghua has won the first prize in the National Student Mechanical Innovation Competition and has received several university scholarships. His main research interests are robot structure design, robot simulation experiment and control system design.

Jean Cheng

Undergraduate Research Assistant
jgcheng@unc.edu

Jean is an undergraduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill aiming to graduate in Spring 2025 with a B.S. in Computer Science as well as minors in Korean and Linguistics. Her areas of research include object detection, artificial intelligence, and image processing, and she is currently working on filtering point clouds to measure the height of cotton seedlings in AR Lab.

Sujit Uppuluri

High School Student
sujituppuluri@gmail.com

Sujit is a student at Green Level High School with a passion for robotics. Through FIRST competitive robotics, founding a prosthetic design club, managing a non-profit providing coding classes, and personal exploration, he has developed skills in mechanical engineering, robotic structure design, computer-aided design, and programming. Sujit is eager to expand his robotics knowledge in the field of agricultural robotics. He will join Carnegie Mellon University in Fall 2024.

Yuxi Chen

Graduate Research Assistant
ychen289@ncsu.edu

Yuxi is a master student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University. She received her B.Eng. in Electronic Science and Technology from Wuhan University of Technology in 2022. Her current project focuses on computer vision, such as instance segmentation and object detection to analyze sweet potato stems. Her research interests include computer vision and computer parallel architecture.

Alex Brown

Master Student
albrow22@ncsu.edu

Alex is an undergraduate student in agricultural engineering in the Department of BAE. She has worked with Dr. Xiang on the design of a legged robot as an undergraduate research assistant. Alex is also working with Dr. Xiang on a senior design project titled "The Design of a Novel Modular and Automated Agricultural Sensing and Control Platform for Anywhere Agriculture". She will start her master program in Fall 2024.

Shengdao Du

Ph.D. Student
sdu6@ncsu.edu

ShengDao Du received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Chang Gung University in 2019. In 2023, he earned his Master degree from the Institute of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University. ShengDao's research focuses on the intersection of agricultural robotics, point cloud algorithms, robot control algorithms, and image processing. At NCSU, he intends to further explore these areas and develop applications related to UGVs.

Prem Raj

PostDoc
fpremra@ncsu.edu

Prem earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur, where his doctoral research developed innovative robotic grasping and motion planning solutions for cluttered environments. His research intersects computer vision, deep learning, and robotic manipulation, driving advancements in intelligent and sustainable agricultural solutions.

Evelynn Wilcox

Undergraduate Research Assistant
emwilco2@ncsu.edu

Evelynn is an undergraduate student at NC State University pursuing a degree in Biological Engineering. She has research interests in agricultural robotics, computer vision, and deep learning modeling. Her research currently focuses on developing datasets and deep learning algorithms for tomato plant disease phenotyping.

Lab Alumni

Postdoctoral Researchers

Wesley Moss (2023-2024): Dr. Wesley Moss is a mechanical engineer and researcher from Australia and worked at NCSU as a Fulbright visiting researcher. He received a PhD in Agricultural Engineering from The University of Western Australia. In collaboration with the Precision Sustainable Agriculture network, Wesley led the development of robotic weeding platforms. As of May 2024, he is a Research Fellow at UWA.

Graduate Research Assistants

Ratan Immidisetti (2022-2023): Ratan's research in the lab focused on performing 2D/3D computer vision tasks like semantic segmentation and object detection. As of May 2024, he is an Applied Scientist at Amazon.

Visiting Scholar

Fan Wu (2023): Fan is an undergraduate student from Zhejiang University. She led the development of AI algorithms for cotton seed damage detection. Fan will join NC State as a master student in Fall 2024.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Hannah Wall (2023-2024): Hannah is an undergraudate student in BAE. She supported robotic weeding, sweetpotato transplanting projects, and summer camp (Summer 2023 and 2024). Hannah will join NC State as a master student in Fall 2024.
Kevin Lin (2023-2024): Kevin led the development of a user interface for tomato disease detection. As of summer 2024, Kevin is an undergraduate student in the Department of Computer Science at NC State.
Costas Pieri (2023): Costas supported robotic weeding and mechanical design. As of 2024, he is an undergraduate student in BAE.
Brendon Sadlowski (2023): Brendon worked on robotic weeding and mechanical design. As of 2024, he is an undergraduate student in BAE.

High School Students

Siddharth Gundarapu (2024): Siddharth supported the mechanical design of a strawberry-sensing robot. As of 2024, he is a high school student at Green Level High School.
Tanvi Chordiya (2024): Tanvi worked on developing robotic systems for strawberry sensing and pruning. As of 2024, she is a high school student at Green Level High School.

Publications

Google Scholar

Projects

Spider Robot

2025

Sweetpotato Transplanting

2025

Robot Control Optimization in Unreal Engine

2025

Spider Robot

2024

BenchBot

2024

Tomato Disease Phenotyping in Unreal Engine

2024

A legged Robot

2023

Amiga Robot

2023

Unreal Engine Robot Simulation

2023

Robotic Assay for Drought

2017 - 2022

RoAD is a custom-built robotic system designed for drought response experiments in Arabidopsis plants. The system performs daily weighing, watering, and imaging tasks automatically. We developed image processing algorithms for both 2D&3D phenotypic trait extraction and leaf states classification

Enviratron

2019 - 2022

The Enviratron is an array of custom-designed plant growth chambers that simulate different environmental conditions coupled with precise sensor-based phenotypic measurements carried out by a robotic rover.

Robotic Leaf Angle Characterization

2019 - 2022

AngleNet is an automated image processing pipeline developed for measuring leaf angles of maize plants in the field. This pipeline detects each leaf angle as a triplet of keypoints in two-dimensional images and extracts quantitative data from reconstructed 3D models.

Holographic Imaging of an Arabidopsis Plant

2019

The RoAD system provides detailed holographic images of a plant by sweeping the target from multiple view angles using a high-resolution laser scanner.

3D Model of Sorghum Stems

2020

Our customized PhenoStereo cameras are capable of capturing high-quality and high sharpness stereoscopic images under field conditions. The images are used to reconstruct high-fidelity 3D models by stereo matching algorithms.

3D Model of Maize Plants

2021

The multiview 3D point clouds were cross-registered to reconstruct the entire canopy of maize plants in the field.

[2025-1] [Competition] Postdoc Dr. Prem Raj won 3rd place in the BAE Three-Minute Thesis Competition. Congratulations!

[2025-3] [Award] Dr. Xiang won the Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) New Innovator Award. Congratulations!

[2025-1] [Award] Weilong He was named Rising Seed Star in 2025. Congratulations!

[2024-12] [Award] Congrats to Dr. Xiang for being named NC State 2024-25 class of Goodnight Early Career Innovators!

[2023-5] [Funding] Our project about tomato disease is funded by USDA-NIFA. Cheers!

[2024-8] [Research] Weilong's work about plant phenotyping is featured in CALS Magazine. Cheers!

[2024-8] [Competition] Our robotics team, WolfAdvance, won first place in the advanced division at the 2024 ASABE Robotics Competition! Congratulations!

[2024-8] [Competition] Our robotics team, RoboPack, won third place in the standard division at the 2024 ASABE Robotics Competition! Congratulations!

[2024-7] [Research] Our work collaborating with Dr. Lina Quesada is featured in NC State News!

[2024-7] [Research] Our work collaborating with Dr. Chris Reberg-Horton is featured on ABC11 Raleigh-Durham!

[2024-4] [Extension] We will lead a summer camp for high school students. More details at Residential Programs for Rising 11th/12th Grade Students. Join us for agricultural robotics!

[2024-3] [Service] Dr. Xiang is visiting University of Moldova as part of the NC State delegation.

[2024-1] [Service] Dr. Xiang serves as a guest editor for Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. Welcome to submit your work here!

[2024-1] [Competition] Zhenghua and Weilong won the Best Prototype Award at NC State’s Sustainability Innovation Competition, Make-A-Thon. Congrats!

[2023-9] [Award] Weilong He received the Norma L. Trolinder N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative Graduate Student Endowment Award. Congratulations!

[2023-8] [Lab] Welcome Zhenghua Zhang to AR Lab!

[2023-7] [Competition] Our robotics team won first place in the 2023 ASABE Robotics Competition! Congratulations to Team RoboPack!

[2023-7] [Competition] Weilong He won 3rd place in the AOCABFE Student Paper Competition. Congratulations!

[2023-6] [Extension] Dr. Xiang is leading a summer camp for high school students. Biological and Agricultural Engineering Summer Workshops Empower Students for the Future!

[2023-5] [Funding] Our project is funded by Chancellor's Innovation Fund. Cheers!

[2023-4] [Research] Our work about robotic plant phenotying was highlighted in the NSF newsletter!

[2023-1] [Lab] Welcome Weilong He to AR Lab!

[2023-1] [Funding] Our project is funded by Cotton Inc. Cheers!

[2023-1] [Lab] Dr. Xiang joined NC State as an assistant professor!

Lirong Xiang

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