I think the follow up circular design is far more efficient. A huge X-Y table is terribly expensive in materials.
In maintenance, too.
FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
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Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#12This is really cool. If these were ever used at scale it could make organic farming cheaper than non. For example instead of pesticides a robot like this could pick off bugs (and or scare them away).
It could also pull weeds getting rid of the need for herbicide.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#13Ever since the Telegarden [0] shut down I've had an idea like this in the back of my mind but not solid enough to give it a name or draw plans. I'm glad someone is making it happen!
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#14This is really cool. If these were ever used at scale it could make organic farming cheaper than non. For example instead of pesticides a robot like this could pick off bugs (and or scare them away). It could also pull weeds getting rid of the need for herbicide.
The design seems fundamentally unscalable due to the rails. I've been to farming areas and fields can go on for miles.
They could have come up with something far more powerful just by sticking it on the front of a tractor and having some tanks/bins for consumables.
Heck, they could have even started from common irrigation systems where you can have 400m of pipe on wheels you roll across the whole field.
I have to wonder how much farmer experience anyone behind this has and if they even looked at current farming equipment before just scaling up a computer printer and sticking a different end on the head.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#15I think the follow up circular design is far more efficient. A huge X-Y table is terribly expensive in materials.
I think x-y scalability would be easier/more versatile/easier to locate than an ever-enlarging circumference.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#16As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is getting there as high-tunnel becomes cheaper to install.)
As an aside, mechanical harvesters for grapes are hilarious. You still need people to run them. One person's job is to find and remove possums from the fruit bin before the critter is buried by a thousand pounds of fruit.
It is a distraction to talk about the gantry, XY or radial. Any gantry based system is going to be a headache from the start because you've got those rails cluttering up the space. Eventually you'll find something the robot cannot do and then you'll be trying to figure out how to get your general purpose tractor around without crushing the gantry.
The radial system is cute, except now your installation and operating costs scale linearly with the amount of crops. With an XY system, one can plant more and extend the rails and have the existing robots do more work. Not possible with the radial system, unless you are going to physically pick up and move the units between circles few times each day. If time is tight (plague of locusts coming in tomorrow, need more robots to squish them) you can increase the robot density by sliding more robots onto the XY gantry. Not possible with radial.
Ultimately it will be about the vision processing and manipulators. And then you might as well mount the vision/manipulator unit on a tractor and have a robot-tractor drive up and down the fields, just like any other piece of equipment. Vastly cheaper and more flexible than gantries.
Eventually we will get there, but it probably won't be until vision processing and lidar gets a whole lot cheaper. We might be on the cusp though, based on the computer vision advances in video gaming.
User roryaronson, I've done a lot with robotics and outdoor electronics too. If you want I can give you a fairly lengthy piece of constructive critism about your whitepaper. You've got a lot of good ideas in there, but just as much misinformation.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#17As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
Your post is the epitome of how domain-knowledge trumps idealism.
I look at this and instantly think "Dirt. And water." Dirt and water will destroy their "machine." Whoever conceived it doesn't respect that farming involves dirt. And water.
As you remind us above, THE TRACTOR IS THE ROBOT. The tractor is safe from Dirt and water. Unless this is some desktop thing. Even as a gantry system, their rendering is naive. ISHYGDDT.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#18Some input as a former organic farmer: wheels.
But a start is a good start, and really wheels can be a hassle, seeing as tractors can't operate on muddy soil (well, shouldn't).
I'm actually somewhat glad someone is doing this. I had a similar idea way-back-when, for gardening, but I had no idea how to handle the issue of having the seeder/weeder/watering device climb over taller vegetables, such as tomatoes, which can get up to 4ft tall, or the mighty sweet corn plant, which can get up to 6ft and higher, at least not without making the thing ugly as all hell or severely manhandle the crop. This is an attractive looking step in a good direction.
I'll follow you on Facebook and occasionally remark about the hell that is trying to grow vegetables in East Texas.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#19As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
As someone who knows nothing about farming or gardening, I'll defer to the points you made as they sound very sensible. But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one (if I had a backyard that is). The thought of a robot that runs on a seasonal calendar that automatically harvests fruits and vegetables for my salad is too cool. To peer out your kitchen window and see a robot till the earth and harvest your small garden to feed you and your family is straight out of science fiction, the optimistic type.
That said, having a high tech piece of equipment with a bunch of moving parts outdoors does seem quite problematic and headache inducing. Here's to reaching the cusp fast....
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#20"If you have another way to donate in mind" Seems like this would be an ideal project for a kickstarter, that way at least the project could create a more informative project page and detail exactly how they hope to spend the money with perhaps the goal of building a prototype in a given time-scale. At the moment it looks a bit too much like someone's had a great idea, done a bit of initial design and thrown together…
Hi, my name is Rory and I am the one behind the project.
We are working towards a crowdfunding launch in 2014 as stated on page 47 of the white paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-...
We've received a good amount of donations so far and will be ordering materials for the initial design this week and next.
I'm currently recruiting other students at my local university to work on the project, and we plan to flesh out the wiki with timelines, design files, and progress updates soon.
Thanks for checking out the project!