Chiaki Nishihara can't stop smiling as she plates up and serves the traditional Japanese stew Nikujaga. The 23-year-old student from Tokyo has just presented her internship report and can now fully present herself as an ambassador for her home country and food culture. The offer is gratefully accepted by staff at the Institute of Process Engineering, Process Automation and Metrology (IPM) and her supervisor Martin Herling.

Chiaki spent three months researching at the IPM. The overarching objective of the project is to have a robot determine the optimum conditions for plant growth. "The aim is to enable it to determine the best conditions for plant growth using parameters defined in advance based on evaluations and calculations of collected data," explains Martin Herling. "Put simply, if you want to grow carrots next to onions, the robot should know in advance what type of soil and how much irrigation and fertilizer is needed to achieve the best results."

Chiaki did not get quite that far during her three-month stay, smiles the researcher. There is still a long way to go before the end result - the use of artificial intelligence in agriculture. But Chiaki has made a valuable contribution to research through her programming work and collection of data records on the growth of conventional wheat.

Using a camera, she filmed the plant over several days in fast motion. She analyzed the resulting images to derive data models for plant growth, which ultimately formed the basis for the work of an AI-controlled robot.

For Martin Herling, Chiaki is the first intern he has supervised as part of his research project. He is very satisfied with the collaboration and emphasizes that he deliberately gave Chiaki plenty of room to try things out for herself and incorporate her interests. "In the three months, we got as far as image analysis. The functions that were developed can now also be edited and expanded thanks to open source technology," he summarizes.

In addition to the presentation of their research results, there was also time for a brief introduction to Japanese writing.

The Japanese culture enthusiast made the most of her three-month internship in Germany, which was funded by the IAESTE program, reports Martin Herling. With side trips to Poland, Sweden and Switzerland, she has opened up a large part of Europe for herself in this short time. Her next stop will be seamlessly across the 'big pond'. In the USA, the 23-year-old, who is actually studying immunology in her home city of Tokyo, will continue her Master's degree during a six-month stay. She is taking her fond memories of her stay in Zittau and German culture with her.

Text: Cornelia Rothe M.A.