Table of Contents

Abstract.2-4
Research Plan.5-13
Project/Design..5-8
Challenge Definition.8-9
Relationship of Challenge to Sustainability.......9-11
With Respect to People..9-10
With Respect to Prosperity.10
With Respect to the Planet10-11
Educational and Interdisciplinary aspects of your proposed project/design11-12
Results (outputs/outcomes), Evaluation and Demonstration.12
Project Schedule and Milestones...12
Partnerships13
Non-Human Subjects Research Determination.13
References....13-14

Abstract
a.
P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing
on People, Prosperity and the Planet. FON: EPA-G2013-P3-Q3-Materials and Chemicals, EPAG2013-P3-Q4 Water
b.
Title: Development of a tethered weather balloon with camera attached to capture
aerial images of crops for researchers and farmers
c.

PI: Brian Lilly, blilly@illinois.edu; Chris Harbourt, chris.harbourt@gmail.com

d.
Student team: Abhishek Ahivasi, undergraduate student; Daniel Lindberg,
undergraduate student
e.

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801

f.
Student Represented Depts. and Institutions: Economics and Minor in
Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychology, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
g.

Project Period and Location: August 15, 2013 to August 14, 2014. Urbana, IL

h.

Proposed EPA Project Cost:

i.

Total Project Amount:

j.

Project Summary:

61801.

Objective:
Water, pesticides, and fertilizer are overused on farms causing health complications to
humans and polluting the environment. The excess nitrogen from fertilizer runs off into the
groundwater contaminating rivers and lakes. People exposed to the nitrogen are at greater risk of
repertory illness, cancer, and heart disease. Additionally, marine life is negatively affected by the
blue-green algae growth fostered by nitrogen. The purpose of this project is to study and develop
a prototype of a portable ground based remote sensing system for farmers so that water,
pesticides, and fertilizer can be reduced to control environmental damage while benefiting the
community. Our goal is to monitor energy crops using multispectral imagery.
If farmers are able to lower their costs by using fewer resources, consumers will also
benefit from lower cost goods.
Currently airplanes, UAVs, satellites, and stand-alone towers are used to assess crop
health through aerial imagery and provide feedback to farmers allowing them to use their
resources efficiently. However, aerial images from airplanes and UAVs are costly and require
2

labor, which makes it difficult for farmers to use on a regular basis and receive an accurate
assessment of their high valued crops. Satellite images are affordable and provide high spatial
resolution but lack temporal resolution to provide quality information to farmers. Of the above
mentioned methods to capture aerial images of crops, the stand-alone remote sensing tower
delivers the best quality images and information on a daily basis without regular human input.
However, from our estimations, the cost of building a stand-alone remote sensing tower is
$200,000. (? How much did it really cost to build) ? At the moment, the stand-alone tower is
only used for research of energy crops by British Petroleum at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign. Our goal is to reproduce the capabilities of a stand-alone tower in a design that is
portable and affordable.
The heart of the design will be a tethered weather balloon with high resolution cameras to
provide ample spatial and temporal resolution of farms. A portable 55 gallon tank will house the
tethered weather balloon attached to a military grade winch that will deploy and retract the
balloon with a remote control. Attached to the top of the tank will be solar panels to power the
system. Our preliminary calculations indicate that our prototype can be developed at a 40th of the
cost of a stand-alone tower. To our knowledge, an innovative technology such as this does not
currently exist. With this technology farmers will be able to ensure a high yield and quality of
their crops while minimizing water, pesticides, and fertilizer usage which will benefit the
community both economically and environmentally.
Description:
Our tethered weather balloon system for crop surveillance takes into account all three
aspects of sustainability. First, the weather balloon is a biodegradable material and easily
disposable. Plus, helium within the balloon is environmentally safe. The entire system will be
powered by solar panels attached on top of the 55 gallon tank. Compared to airplanes and UAVs
our design offers a more sustainable alternative. Farmers will be able to optimize their resources
and increase their yield for a lower cost. In turn consumers will receive quality produce at a
lower cost. Furthermore, the reduction in water, pesticides, and fertilizer will keep the planet
environmentally strong.
With regards to education, this project will be a great learning opportunity for the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and community as a whole. The prototype will be
placed alongside an existing stand-alone tower at the University of Illinois farms and will aid in
research of biofuels and precision agriculture. Companies such as Waterborne Environmental,
Inc., a consulting firm in Champaign that provides innovative approaches to environmental
studies and risk assessment, will test the prototype with clients and provide expert advice.
Prototypes will also be placed on farms within Champaign County to educate farmers on
precision agriculture and encourage sustainability. ?? Students ranging in programs from
psychology, business, engineering, advertising, and computer science will all get to learn hands
on approaches to building a prototype ?? ??
3

Results:
The expected output of this project is a cost effective prototype of the tethered weather
balloon with cameras for crop surveillance and software allowing the farmers to view their
results online. As mentioned above, a successful prototype will provide great benefits to the
community as a whole. It will allow farmers to consistently monitor their crops, which in turn
will allow them to minimize water, pesticides, and fertilizer while increasing crop yield. This
will result in quality produce for consumers at a lower price and reduction of nitrogen runoff into
water sources. The software programs results will help facilitate information sharing among
nearby farmers and provide eco-friendly farming tips. Additionally, it will encourage further
development of other technologies such as biofuels. This product can change the traditional
methods of agriculture and positively impact the world.
Our prototype will be tested and assessed alongside the established stand-alone tower at
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Tests will be conducted to ensure that the design is
capable of capturing high resolution images and is not compromised by low winds affecting the
stability of the device.
k.

Contribution to Pollution Prevention or Control:

The proposed project will further the goals of pollution control by reducing toxic
pesticides in the air and water systems. Also, fertilizer runoff into water systems will be reduced
which will help control the growth of blue-green algae. Another way our project will contribute
to pollution control is in the reduction of emissions from airplanes used to assess crop health.
Finally, the project will promote research and investment in biofuels by making harvest of
energy crops efficient. Therefore, it is clear that this project will aid in the prevention and control
of pollution globally.
l.
Supplemental Keywords: Affordable technology, environmentally benign
substitute, global considerations, aerial imagery, NDVI technology, remote sensing, precision
agriculture

Research paper:
Project/Design
Every year farmers overuse water, pesticides, and fertilizer to ensure the quality and yield
of crops on their farms. Unfortunately, as a result much of the excess pesticides and fertilizers
pollute the environment causing health problems for all forms of life. Additionally, farmers incur
a greater cost by wasting their resources in an inefficient manner. Therefore, many farmers have
turned to remote sensing technology to better understand the health of their crops and optimize
their water, pesticides, and fertilizer usage accordingly. Aerial imagery using NDVI technology
from airplanes and UAVs allow farmers to assess the health of their crops. However, these
methods are not efficient because aircrafts release emissions, require a huge amount of labor and
time, and collecting data on a daily basis is not realistic. Ground based systems have begun to
gain attention from precision agriculture experts since they are able to collect data on a daily
basis, are close to the target, cost effective, and require less human input to collect data. We
propose a ground based system which allows farmer to take aerial imagery of their crops,
without the limitations of an airplane or UAV, which in turn will allow farmers to cost
effectively reduce the usage of water, pesticides, and fertilizer while remaining environmental
friendly.
To better understand the scope of this project it is important to understand the current
issues within the agricultural industry. According to Chris Harbourt, principal engineer for
Waterborne Environmental, Inc. and adjunct assistant professor in agriculture and
bioengineering, many farmers apply fertilizer, pesticides, and water based on guesstimation and
little scientific data. This is because collecting data is costly, time consuming, and not available
on a daily basis. In turn
farmers overuse their
resources costing
themselves and damaging
the environment. The
excess nitrogen from
fertilizer leaks into the
groundwater and runs into
rivers and lakes. The
nitrogen then produces a
larger amount of toxic
blue-green algae which
kills marine life and is
harmful to humans.
Pesticides pose a threat to
Figure 1: Blue-green algae found at Grand Lake due to an elevated presence of
nitrogen and phosphorous in the water.
not only farmers but the
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community and have been linked to certain types of skin cancer, birth defects, and Parkinsons
disease. Therefore, it is critical that pollution from pesticides and fertilizer be reduced and
controlled.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in conjunction with British Petroleum
have developed a 124 foot stand-alone remote sensing tower for researching efficient techniques
to harvest energy crops for biofuels. The stand-alone tower allows researchers to monitor crops
and study growth patterns on a daily basis throughout the growing season using high resolution
images, which can be analyzed by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index to assess the
health of the crops. Additionally, researchers have already developed the necessary software
required to carry out the operations throughout the growing season. This system would be ideal
for farmers to assess their high valued crops during a growing season. However, the initial cost
to build a stand-alone remote sensing tower is an estimated 200,000 dollars. At this cost, it is in
the best interest of farmers to continue overusing water, pesticides, and fertilizer to produce a
profitable yield. If the system was available to farmers at significantly lower cost, it would be
economical for farmers to adopt the technology.

Figure 2: Stand-alone remote sensing tower at the

University of Illinois used for research of energy
crops.

Figure 3 NDVI Image from stand-alone remote

sensing tower.

The goal of our research is to allow farmers to maximize crop yield while minimizing
water, pesticides, and fertilizer. In order to achieve our goal, we must engineer a system that will
monitor the crops and develop software, which will analyze the results. The objective of our
research is to develop a prototype of our ground based system remote sensing system.
Our current design modifies and integrates existing technologies to uniquely address the
needs of the farming industry. Consider a tethered weather balloon in the center of a 40 acre farm
with a high resolution camera attached which collects data regularly and provides quick feedback
to farmers via the web or smart phone application so that they can adjust the use of their
resources to meet the needs of their
crops. However, it is not realistic to
leave a weather balloon tethered for a
whole growing season due to
unpredictable weather conditions. Thus,
our teams major design task is to
automate the deployment and retraction
of the balloon. The system will function
with a 55 gallon tank that will house the
helium, winch, cameras, and the weather
balloon. The 55 gallon tank will have a
solar panel attached to the top to charge
a lithium ion battery which will provide
power for the entire system. Once the
system is activated, the tank will open
and the helium will inflate the balloon
attached to a tether, which will rise out
of the tank to 150 feet above ground
level. After the balloon has reached the
Figure 2: Weather balloon with a Go Pro Camera attached.
appropriate height, the winch will
steadily retract the balloon providing a tension on the tether which will help stabilize the weather
balloon from a breeze. During the descent, the automatic camera will capture images of the 40
acre plot. Once this is complete, the images will be transferred to software, which will analyze
the data and provide the information to farmers online. The main reason the height of the balloon
is restricted to 150 feet is because at 150 feet or below the FAA does not require notification of
the tethered balloon. Additionally, at greater heights the balloon will be more unstable and
difficult to control. The balloon camera will rotate from 0 and 355 in the horizontal plane and will
be tilted at 90 in the vertical plane. The balloon platform the camera is attached to will have a digital
compass to make sure the yaw and pitch are in the correct position. Plus, at 45.72 meters, 150 feet, the
camera should have ample space to capture the whole plot for data. The camera system will be capable of
capturing and collecting color infrared images (CID) of the crops. With this design we hope to

reproduce the capabilities of a stand-alone remote sensing tower at an affordable price for
7

farmers. The normalize difference vegetation index (NDVI) image of the field will help farmers
identify the overall understanding of their vegetation status, through mapping out the crops by
nutrient status and weed density.
Automatic image

Remote sensing provides digital results with high temporal resolution and a synoptic view that can be
rapidly and efficiently processed in large quantities. Therefore, researchers and policy planners are
Biomass and biophysical properties monitoring are becoming more popular in the agriculture community
(Lu, 2006, Nelson et al., 1988, Steininger, 2000 and Zheng et al., 2004). Because our product provides
high temporal resolution with opportunity of looking at the crops in a broader context over a long period
of time. Our design offers a valuable and effecient data system to use to help meet the growing demand
for site-specific management crops, specifically energy crops that east monitored due to the relationship
between spectral bands and .
The major criteria for selecting a remote-sensing method are the spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions
required by the site-specific application.
However, ground-based sensing has immense potential and is becoming a popular technique for sitespecific management. High- A multispectral image sensor was used to detect nitrogen stress in a maize
field, and application rate has been successfully determined in real time (Noh, Zhang, Han, Shin, &
Reum, 2005).
Ground-based systems have the potential to collect images over the growing seasons to enable sitespecific management
Ground-based sensing systems, such as this example, present a unique opportunity to enhance the sitespecific management of energy crops and biomass feedstock production. The tracking of biomass and
suitable vegetative indices is important to estimate the biomass yield for maximising feedstock production
over the growing season. Ground-based systems have the potential to collect images over the growing
seasons to enable site-specific management
extensive limitations on revisit time.
.

According to Chris Harbourt, industry expert, our design is capable of accomplishing the
task of capturing quality aerial images of a farm. For years weather balloons have been used by
photographers to capture aerial images. There already exist many tools for photographers to
attach a stable camera to the tether to capture a 360 degree view. However, for our purpose the
camera must be very stable so that the quality of the images will not compromise the
effectiveness of system. The primary trade-off with this design is that although mobile, when the
images are captured, the balloon will not be fully stable affecting the quality of the images. For
example, the device will only be used when the breeze is relatively low. Further research into
stability will also be conducted before the development of the prototype.

We are aware that in order for our design to be commercialized it must be economical
and be able to compete with airplanes, UAVs, satellites, and the stand-alone tower. As
mentioned, above the stand-alone tower is an estimated 200,000 dollars to build. Our preliminary
calculations show that our design will be one fortieth to one fiftieth the cost of a stand-alone
tower. It will be less expensive than airplanes, UAVs, and satellites methods but with the
capabilities and benefits of a stand-alone remote sensing tower. The online or smart phone
applications that displays the farmers results also has economic feasibility with the opportunities
to advertise or sell environmentally friendly products online. With this system farmers will be
able to reduce their cost of water, pesticides, and fertilizers, which will help them maximize their
profits. This will allow farmers to provide quality produce at a lower price to consumers. Hence,
our design will be well worth the costs to develop and commercialize.
All the work is motivated by the belief that this system succeed. We believe this for three
reasons. First, people from within the industry have expressed a demand for the product. We are
working closely with an industry expert, Chris Harbourt, to assure the design will meet its
potential. Second, the product is economical for farmers. A small initial fee would ensure the
health of their crops while minimizing water, pesticides, and fertilizer. Our product will pay for
itself within a growing season. Finally, and most importantly, it is crucial that we as a
community conserve water and reduce the harmful toxins in our environment and protect the
well-being of every life form on our planet.
Challenge Definition
The main challenge this project will address is the reduction in water, pesticides, and
fertilizer used on farms. By monitoring the crops on a daily basis, farmers will be able to better
assess and serve the needs of their crops. However, for this system to operate throughout a whole
growing season, there are several challenges. First, the balloon must be stabilized on its descent
to capture quality images of the entire plot being assessed. Second, the balloon must be able to
preserve the helium or refill in the 55 gallon tank. This can be achieved by maintaining a
favorable condition inside the 55 gallon tank. Third, the system must be automatic and be able to
deploy or retract with the push of a button on a remote. Fourth, the software engineering of a
program that will direct the NDVI images from the physical machine to the world wide web or
smart phone application. ( ???? ) The final major challenge is to make the entire product cost
effective. This can be achieved through integrating existing technology into the system. Lesser
challenges include designing a tank that will open and close, designing a mount for the solar
panels on top of the tank, and designing a mount for the cameras.
There exist numerous approaches to capturing aerial imagery to assess the health of crops
but none of the approaches involve a tethered balloon in the center of a farm. The most popular
approach to assess crop is through aerial images from airplanes. Airplane aerial images allow
farmers to accurately assess the health of their crops but only at one particular point in time.
However, airplanes are costly and cannot be used daily throughout a growing season. Therefore,
9

airplanes limit the information available to farmers and make it difficult to accurately adjust their
water, pesticide, and fertilizer usage. Another approach is the use of UAVs. Once again this
approach is costly, cannot be used daily, and requires human input. The third approach is the use
of satellite. This method is not very accurate due to the fact that temporal resolution is low of the
images. Additionally, satellites revisit time is 2-5 days which makes it difficult to precisely
adjust the water, pesticides, and fertilizer needed. The stand-alone remote sensing tower is
perhaps the most accurate and capable of providing accurate feedback to farmers. However, as
mentioned above the cost of building and maintaining a stand-alone tower is not realistic for
farmers. Our project aims to tackle these problems by making a cost effective system that can be
used daily to provide the most up to date feedback to farmers. This will allow farmers to
accurately and confidently measure the growth of their crops while minimizing their resources
and protecting the environment.
Relationship of Challenge to Sustainability
With Respect to People:
This product will help farmers and the general population alike. Farmers will limit their spending
by reducing or flat out eliminating expensive pesticides and unneeded water supplies. This leaves
more funds for economic growth for farmers in these tough economic times. This green design
will also help farmers save time and valuable energy needed for the job. Allowing farmers to
become more efficient ultimately benefits the whole community. This product will engage
intended end users through a variety of mediums. One way it will engage intended end users is
through the iPhone application. This user interface will let farmers see crop specifics such as
wind, erosion patterns, etc. The application we are looking to build will facilitate information
sharing on water use, pesticides, etc. among farmers and offer advice on the reduction of
hazardous chemicals. Plus, the design will offer technical expertise on how the farmer should go
about supporting their "green" farm. The effectiveness of this design for the environment will
show farmers how pollution prevention will save them money and protect natural resources. This
business practice could also help farmers market their crops to specific business that promote the
widespread adoption of sustainable agricultural practices. This project will improve the quality
of life of not only the farmers, but the general population as well who will consume these more
natural crops. Reducing fertilizer in turn lessens the amount of excess nitrogen that can leak into
groundwater and run into rivers and lakes, which has been linked to certain types of skin cancer,
birth defects, and Parkinsons disease. Keeping the earths bodies of water healthy not only
benefits the people but also marine life and aquatic species. Improvement in air quality due to
solar power rather than fuel will only have positive impacts on human health. This design
promotes and will create green jobs. Any form of mitigating climate change is critical to the
people and the achievement of a sustainable society. As farmers share the positive results of the
system and the money and time they saved with it, the product will gain an increasingly strong

10

footing in the agriculture market. Ultimately, this design reduces the use of water, pesticides and
greenhouse gases, which will help generations after us to inherit a better world.
With Respect to Prosperity:
This cost-effective product will achieve economic prosperity because the design is self-reliant.
Not only will it auto-deploy when the weather and wind are within parameter, but it also will
require very little maintenance or customer support. The on-demand results from the crop canopy
image will show up on an iPhone, eliminating pricy picture costs and the idea of taking the
photographs from a plane. The costs associated with this project are straightforward. The
equipment costs will be between three and five thousand dollars and as the project continues to
develop, we hope this cost will be lowered. Using solar power eliminates daily fuels costs like
the alternative technologies in practice. Plus, the cost of solar panels, a main component of our
design, are getting cheaper and becoming more effective. Changing the unsustainable patterns
and schedules of farmers is a must and leaves plenty of room for economic development.
Nursery farmers and those with high-value crops will see this tool as economically beneficial and
help these farmers yield more. Treating crops with pesticides ultimately diminishes the quality of
farms, the environment, and the health of society. This economic opportunity leads to eradicating
these unsustainable processes. The product will capitalize on partnerships among local farms and
businesses that have goals of both sustainable agriculture and prosperity. This dollar saving
business model will attain economical efficiency and environmental performance will progress.
The economic room for growth is what makes this project great!
With Respect to the Planet:
The tethered balloon camera device will protect the environment in several different ways. One
aspect is that this device will improve crop health by providing farmers with informative images
of their crop canopy. These images will limit pesticide applications, unneeded use of water and
allow farmers to adjust their center-pivot irrigation systems. Also, this picture will give a spectral
signature of the differences among their crops. Farmers operate on perceived schedules, whether
it is water every other day or pesticide once a week; this design will reduce the perceived
schedule farmers operate on, providing farmers with highly accurate information. If the farmers
can see things such as rain distribution, erosion and wind patterns, etc. then they can swerve off
their schedule, only feeding the crops when the images show the crop canopy is unhealthy. The
farmers perceived need for water and pesticides will be dramatically reduced. Plus, excess
nitrogen from fertilizer will not be absorbed by soil nor will polluted groundwater runoff into
lakes or rivers recurrently. The crop canopy images we intend to design are a new source for the
elimination of GHG emissions and will build the framework into abolishing the old practices that
had negative environmental consequences. Absolutely no greenhouse gases will be released
through our design. Another result this design will achieve is reducing the use and manufacturing
of hazardous materials. The elimination of these harmful pesticides will improve both human and
ecological health. Elimination of their use will also lead to a reduction in the manufacturing of
11

them and the development of safer agricultural practices will be put into place. Finally, the old
and expensive process of flying a plane over fields and manually taking pictures will be
completely eliminated. This product will reduce air emissions of gas guzzling planes and replace
the process with helium balloons. This project will conserve valuable resources and minimize
pollution by helping the user understand how to assess their crops using this design as a decision
support tool, pinpointing threats to the crop and letting the farmers treat them as naturally as
possible. The mission of this design follows that of EPA's Pollution Prevention Program (P2).
This product will prevent pollution at the starting point--overuse of pesticides and water in
agriculture. According to the EPA definition of a sustainable design, our team firmly believes
our design is a "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of further generations to meet their own needs."
Integration of P3 Concepts as an Educational Tool
This design has extensive educational benefits. Team members will get to experience and
work on a diverse number of disciplines and technologies. These technologies are from all
different areas including agricultural engineering, crop science, sustainable agriculture, soil
chemistry, marketing, web-based design, etc. Team members will get immeasurable direct
experience within these disciplines. Teamwork is at the heart of this design and team members
will work to solve difficult problems through innovative and creative methods. Another great
motivator is that a former class member of Technology Entrepreneurship 461 won the previous
P3 competition. In 2011, Trey Ward won a Phase I grant for his work in developing a solarpowered, self-watering flower planter that measures soil moisture and recaptures rainwater for
later use. This success is one motivator that has been an extreme encouragement to group
members, demonstrating that accomplishing our entrepreneurial ambitions are possible. Another
educational tool this design may inspire is when this design is put into use; at that point, the
sustainable movement will be put on show. This may cause other entrepreneurs and businesses to
think "green" and hopefully affect the publics state of mind on sustainable industry. The
emphasis of this science-based design is understanding the earths natural and man-made
systems and applying innovating new technologies to help them, which is an important
educational frame of mind for future generations to follow.
Results, Evaluation and Demonstration
The goal and results of this team will be providing a sustainable answer to a wasteful
agricultural practice. This will be achieved through the integration of several different disciplines
to reach a final product. This collaboration includes the general engineering of the physical
prototype including the base, camera and tethered balloon. Software engineering will build and
link the prototype to the application. The hope of the group is to provide a sound breakdown of
costs of the design. The group is sure that this design can be developed and implemented into the
market. This design has plenty of room for economic growth and it will be implemented globally
if the domino effect among farmers opinions takes place as hoped. The results of this design
12

will also accomplish what EPA P3 program expects to achieve: It will reduce air emissions,
unneeded water use, and harmful pesticides.
The main goal of this design is to help preserve natural resources and limit harmful
effects on the environment. This design has challenges to face, but its goal is achievable and the
success of this project will define it. To evaluate the product, in the fall several farms will take
part in a study to calculate how much water was saved and the extent to which pesticides were
limited. Our partner Chris Harbourt and principal engineer at Waterborne Environmental, Inc., a
consulting firm that provides environmental studies and risk assessments will test the prototype
with clients and provide expert feedback. Our prototype will be tried and measured alongside the
stand-alone tower at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Testing will make sure that
the design has the ability to remain stable and capture high-resolution images. This product has
the ability to prosper in an often-unnoticed industry. We have no doubt that our small group of
committed students and partners can change the agricultural world with this design.
Project Schedule and Milestones
Discipline/Department: Mechanical/ General Engineering
March 1, 2013- Design a virtual prototype using AutoCAD
June 1, 2013: Develop a functioning prototype of winch and weather balloon
September 1, 2013: Develop a fully functioning prototype of the design
These deadlines have been organized to help the product go from the design during the
second semester of the school year and summer to the development stages in the summer. By the
end of summer 2013, the design will be complete besides some of the software components. The
group will accomplish one working prototype by the end of the summer. This unit will then be
put into practice and market testing will take place during the fall of 2014. Aspects such as
demand for the design and measuring success will begin. When the group returns to school, if
necessary, design flaws and alterations will occur.
Partnerships
Chris Harbourt is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and the principal engineer and vice president of Waterborne Environmental, Inc.
Chris received his PH.D in Agricultural E ngineering from the University of Illinois in 2002. He
is helping us with the design and is our expert in hydrology, soil, water, pesticides, AutoCAD,
and environmental impact assessments. He will be the groups primary contact regarding the
engineering and design components.
Brian Lilly is the instructor of our technology entrepreneurship class and a great resource
for all things entrepreneurial. He received his PH.D in Aeronautical Engineering from the
13

University of Illinois in 1989. He has also designed several products that have had market
success. He currently runs two entrepreneurial companies that all started with a simple concept
such as ours. His advice and insight into product development and making a product marketable
will be valuable to the group. Also, he will be the main contact regarding the production and
Non-Human Subjects Research Determination
Our proposed research and evaluation does not involve the use of human subjects.
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