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Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

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Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#3
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

The old TAB books on robotics are pretty good IMO. Not the electronics section, that's mostly out of date, but all the physical stuff like motors and kinetics is still pretty topical.

E.g. "The Complete Handbook of Robotics" by Edward L. Safford, Jr. https://archive.org/details/completehandbook0000saff

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OOOooooo! See also "Cybernetics A to Z" by V. Pekelis that just made it to the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639261 It looks fantastic!

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#4
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

For practical experience the jetson nano jetbot is a really fun project. Combines 3d printing, computer vision, motor control, etc.

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#5
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

'Handbook of Robotics' by Siciliano & Khatib.

It covers a lot from principles to application, it was the book that clicked for me in terms of understanding kinematics of robots.

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#6
post #3
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

The old TAB books on robotics are pretty good IMO. Not the electronics section, that's mostly out of date, but all the physical stuff like motors and kinetics is still pretty topical. E.g. "The Complete Handbook of Robotics" by Edward L. Safford, Jr. https://archive.org/details/completehandbook0000saff - - - - OOOooooo! See also "Cybernetics A to Z" by V. Pekelis that just made it to the front page: https://news.ycom…

I remember my public library having that Safford book when i was a kid and when the world was going crazy about C3P0 and R2D2.

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#7
"People are part of terroir"

The most common type of machine automation in the wine industry is the use of optical sorters - no longer do you need rows of people separating good grapes from raisains and debris. The machine scans what's going through the shoot and uses multiple prongs to flick anything unwanted into a separate container. The sorters are even transportable to different wineries and vineyards.

The issue is that wine is not an engineering product, people don't want it all to taste the same. These machines do have calibration but in my experience we're getting too close to wine as a generic product. That is my fear with something like this - we know more than ever about grapes and when to harvest, we lose what makes a wine unique.

So while I praise this product and the exciting world of agricultural technology - just not sure it's the right direction for wine.

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#8
I recently volunteered to help a local vineyard harvest their grapes. It was a learning experience, and I thought about robots and if they'd be suitable. Part of the "skill" involved was leaving grapes on the vine that hadn't ripened 100%. Furthermore, the care required to gently clip and extract the grapes from a "viney" plant without damage or loss was sometimes tricky. Hard to see a robot mastering the process, without changes in how the grapes are grown/attached.

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#9
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

Check out the stuff at Pololu robotics, they have parts all the way up to full kits

Re: Autonomous robots to help modernize grape, wine industry

#10
post #2

It looks like autonomous robots are on everyone's lips lately, that's awesome, because it's really interesting topic (at least for me). What would you suggest reading to create my first robot? I mean the hardware part, not the programming one. Thank you

The hard part about robotics is that you're interfacing with the real world, where everything can go wrong. It's like you take a program and run it on a CPU with a radiation source next to it. All your strong invariants suddenly become a "maybe". Not literally of course, but that's how it feels if you start your robot for the 100th time thinking nothing can go wrong this time ...
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