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Topic starter
2020-06-17 10:10 pm
I designed this unit to do various tasks on my farm/ranch. Carry equipment/tools to and from programmed locations, to actually riding on it using a joystick control. Yet my main real purpose is to set it up to spray my pastures and fields for weed control and later spray fruit trees that I have on my place for pesty bugs.
I still need to install sensors for both for obstacles and tank depletion then auto-refill at a storage tank location, which I plan for this to work using my telemetry system.
I do have an overview of the machine on YOUTUBE for those interested in taking a look at my machine design.
So far I had some great concepts from this group that has been tossed at me for additional development. I would like to chat about some of these concepts and see if I could master these on this machine.
2020-06-18 1:31 am
Have you viewed all your competition when it comes to farm robot design?
I worked on the family farm (citrus and grapes) for 20 years and often day dreamed about possible robotic solutions to many of the daily tasks. Looking at all the examples on the internet I now see many of them look like they may become a reality.
Personally I would look for a biological rather than a chemical solution to pest control.
TexAcoon reacted
Topic starter
2020-06-18 12:00 pm
@robotbuilderI have looked at other machines and like so many each has its own unique features. I had reviewed a bot rover that would pick weeds and thought that was pretty cool .. It could tell the difference between a weed and grass and would pick the weeds out. I thought about it some and though my machine would be working till next year sometime before it got all the weeds out of my pasture - Then start all over again. LOL! There were some bots that were sprayers but were so huge I didn't think it would have been cost-effective for the farmer who owned the orchards. There are all kinds out there and figured I would do my own thing .. Since I built this unit as my prototype I have a lot of updates to do to it before I can even think about selling one. I figured within a year or two I should have a good product.
Still in the R&D phase and need to add sensors to the unit for obstacle avoidance and have different types of cameras that I could use and wanted them to feedback to the user data. I did like the sound of the computer vision to the system allowing machine learning but have not read enough about it.
2020-06-22 9:38 pm
@robotbuilderI have looked at other machines and like so many each has its own unique features. I had reviewed a bot rover that would pick weeds and thought that was pretty cool .. It could tell the difference between a weed and grass and would pick the weeds out. I thought about it some and though my machine would be working till next year sometime before it got all the weeds out of my pasture - Then start all over again. LOL!
But you wrote: "Yet my main real purpose is to set it up to spray my pastures and fields for weed control and later spray fruit trees that I have on my place for pesty bugs."
Using vision to turn nozzles on/off wouldn't make it any slower it would just use less weedicide or fungicide. As a potential commercial product that calls itself a robot (autonomous machine) a large proportion of development would be in the software. Vision can probably be implemented via ROS by a capable programmer.