Cheryl McCarthy

Dr. Cheryl McCarthy is an Associate Professor in Mechatronic Engineering and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southern Queensland, focusing on automation and machine vision technologies in agriculture. She has been a full-time researcher since completing her PhD in 2009, with expertise in machine vision, robotics, and precision agriculture.

Education: BEng (2005) and PhD (2004) in Mechatronic Engineering from the University of Southern Queensland.

Research interests include crop disease detection (e.g., wheat root rot using NIR spectroscopy and machine learning), automation in farming operations, and robotic systems for precision agriculture. Her work spans orchard mapping, UAV-based irrigation monitoring, and livestock welfare assessment via machine vision. She has led projects on weed detection, fruit load estimation, and robotic navigation in agricultural environments.

Key contributions include developing the 'MangoYOLO' deep learning model for fruit detection and advancing non-destructive crop sensing technologies. Her research integrates robotics, computer vision, and environmental sensing to address challenges in sustainable agriculture.

Current and completed supervisions include projects on machine learning applications in meat processing, precision agriculture, and robotic localization in orchards. Major grants include farm trials for chicken welfare monitoring (2023), precision weed detection systems (2016), and harvester loss assessment (2019).

Labs/Teams: Works within the Centre for Agricultural Engineering, collaborating on projects like space agriculture sensing and crop disease diagnostics.