[HN Gopher] Open Source Farming Robot
___________________________________________________________________
Open Source Farming Robot
Author : antoinec
Score : 358 points
Date : 2021-06-25 07:34 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (farm.bot)
(TXT) w3m dump (farm.bot)
| lxe wrote:
| This is a cool concept, and probably can be applied to some sort
| of specific farm design, but I kinda feel like there's a better
| way to implement some parts of this.
|
| Drip irrigation for watering and fertilizing comes to mind, which
| really is a better solution and prevents the need to water
| directly onto the leaves of the plant, which is a huge no-no to a
| lot of plants.
| jasondozell wrote:
| No doubt the tech is interesting but conceptually this is pretty
| awful.
|
| Anyone who has done it knows if you have irrigation sorted there
| is very little needed for seedlings to grow to full size. Even
| with no irrigation we're only talking 5mins watering on dry days.
|
| Adding all this electronics and metal to an otherwise organic and
| natural process is environmentally, economically and spiritually
| detrimental.
| sgt wrote:
| I thought the same. Why not just sort out an automated
| irrigation system, and do the initial seeding manually? Even
| with a robot there will be manual work like cleaning weeds,
| pruning, etc.
| justsomeperson wrote:
| weeding and pest control is where the real utility for a farm
| robot would come in.
| sgt wrote:
| Yes, good point. Does this open source farm robot spray
| pesticide?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Shouldn't need too, if you know where you've planted then
| you can kill any plant that's growing in an unknown
| place.
|
| For all the other types of pest, you really don't want to
| be automatically spraying that, you're one software bug
| away from having a very bad day.
| [deleted]
| codingdave wrote:
| I wish I could like this idea, but their price is pretty steep
| for how small of an area they cover. Their ROI page is all about
| the cost of growing your own veggies vs. store-bought, but that
| misses the mark(et). Bots like this do not compete with stores,
| they compete with your own manual labor to DIY. And the labor to
| grow some veggies (especially in a raised garden box) is not that
| painful.
|
| They would be better served focusing on this as an accessibility
| device, allowing people to garden who do not have the physical
| capability to otherwise do so.
| jasondozell wrote:
| Agree. Long-run, a drone type machine may well become
| successful (flying around zapping weeds) but this is way over-
| engineered for what it does.
| bobiny wrote:
| Drones are fun, but there might be no need to fight weeds so
| much. They help plants get stronger and kill off weak ones.
| Farms are overrun with pests and weeds because ecosystem is
| incomplete and natural cycles are not followed. Some type of
| permaculture approach like Fukuoka farming could be a more
| robust alternative to zapping.
| bobiny wrote:
| I think humans moving further from soil is unhealthy in the long
| run, but this looks fun, like a reverse farming simulator.
| Zenst wrote:
| The user-interface, planning your plot sure does gameify that
| aspect very much like a farm simulator. Heck, in today's times
| I shudder how much game/real-life cross-over and IP conflicts
| we see play out in the years too come.
| junon wrote:
| Why?
| bobiny wrote:
| Why unhealthy?
| junon wrote:
| Yes, sorry should have been more clear.
| bobiny wrote:
| Np, this https://qz.com/993258/dirt-has-a-microbiome-and-
| it-may-doubl... And in general it's about being close to
| nature. Traveling between a flat and an office, sitting
| in metal or concrete boxes and connecting via messengers
| is a surrogate or a simulation of life. Again, can be
| fun, but gotta step outside once in a while, touch
| plants, smell the living air.
| d--b wrote:
| Growing your own veggies requires an awful lot of time, so
| barely anybody does it.
|
| If this robot allows people with little time to grow vegetables
| in their backyard, you can argue that they will move closer to
| soil rather than further...
| jasondozell wrote:
| That's not that true and the robot will hardly help.
|
| The reason people don't do it is that commercial farming is
| so efficient once you factor in costs growing your own is not
| cheaper than buying from supermarket.
| d--b wrote:
| People don't do it because each hour you spend in your
| garden is an hour you could have spent doing something
| else. The problem is not that you have to spend half an
| hour a day to do it, the problem is that it takes weeks of
| spending half an hour a day to get anything. And as a
| beginner, there is a good chance that you're going to screw
| something up.
|
| A lot of people prefer spending half an hour a day learning
| italian, or rock climbing, or whatever...
| GVIrish wrote:
| Nah it doesn't take anywhere near that amount of time to
| raise some produce. Maybe a half hour total per week, if
| that.
|
| Some stuff is easier to grow, some is harder, but for
| example I barely did anything on my strawberry patch this
| year other than picking them when they got ripe. I'd say
| I spent maybe 15 minutes a month on the strawberries.
|
| Now if you're trying to grow a lot of stuff then the time
| investment might increase but most backyard gardens don't
| take up that much time once you've planted everything.
| jasondozell wrote:
| It's not half and hour a day. More like an hour a week.
| If you don't enjoy the process of gardening you shouldn't
| do it. Over-engineered robotic solutions for small plots
| are never going to make much sense.
| kortex wrote:
| It's not really about the cost. We are working on a
| greenhouse with raised beds. Between parts, tools, and
| piles of topsoil, I think we are $2-3k in (upstate NY). It
| was never gonna break even. It's a fun project, and it
| gives you unbelievable freshness and quality.
|
| Robot might help in a greenhouse setting but outdoors it's
| just gonna get mudded up and get fine, abrasive clay dust
| in everything. Needs to be way more ruggedized.
| jasondozell wrote:
| Don't disagree with any of that however all the effort is
| before the robotics gets involved.
| [deleted]
| bobiny wrote:
| Agree, I haven't thought of that.
| codingdave wrote:
| > barely anybody does it.
|
| I suspect this varies by location and demographics. Being an
| older guy living in rural areas, almost everyone I know grows
| at least some veggies and fruit. Not everyone makes it a
| major part of their lives, but I'd be hard-pressed to find
| almost anyone I know who doesn't have at least a couple
| tomato plants, or some berry bushes.
| catmanjan wrote:
| What if you had a robot gantry that could attach itself to
| existing centre pivot systems to do seeding and tillage?
| kortex wrote:
| Brilliant take. Especially if you use some sort of roller-
| coaster-tire style mechanism vs linear ways, which just aren't
| going to stay aligned.
|
| It would need a position and feedback system outside of the
| current "servo and home position" method, because even with
| closed loop motors, the distance traversed isn't exact. We need
| a cheap, easy way to get accurate-ish absolute position
| (1-3cm), maybe acoustics and phase-based?
| max_likelihood wrote:
| From what I can see, this just waters the plants? Is there any
| weed control (e.g. spraying with super-heated Clove oil)?
| vntok wrote:
| Yes there is.
| bobiny wrote:
| It has something like a tiny drill on video from 0:40
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=qwSbWy_1f8w
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Would be useful to see some performance metrics, and, service
| history.
|
| How much produce is produced?
|
| How much time spent cleaning, repairing, or otherwise keeping it
| running
|
| What preventive maintenance is required?
|
| i.e., other than a learning tool, if you just consider the small
| garden users, what's the return?
| malloryerik wrote:
| This uses Elixir with the Nerves IoT platform. Jose Valim blogged
| about it last year: https://elixir-
| lang.org/blog/2020/08/20/embedded-elixir-at-f...
| sklargh wrote:
| Other people will love this but the analog nature of gardening is
| what keeps me interested. This sort of ruins the meditative joy I
| get out of the hobby.
|
| But if Homelab + Dirt = awesome to you, more power to you.
| cube2222 wrote:
| I wonder if it would be viable to set this (their Express
| version) up on a 1x0.5m table in an apartment.
|
| I'd love something like this, and with a refillable water tank.
| williesleg wrote:
| What about all the illegals? Replacing them with robots? How
| racist!
| deeviant wrote:
| Oh hey this is my industry (robots in agriculture).
|
| I don't like this. It feels way too "Juicero" to me. Too cute, to
| inconsequential. It feels likely one would spend more time on
| building and maintaining this thing than work it actually saves
| and a significant amount the benefit of having a garden is
| working it with you hands and watching that work grow in
| fruition.
|
| Bots in the farm though, they are the real deal. Reducing
| herbicide use by 80% or more, allowing the use of non-GMO crop
| while maintaining strong weed control and healthy crop, treating
| and optimizing every individual plant in a field, all things that
| will happen in the next 10 years due to robotics in the farm.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If you're willing to share, I'd be interested in knowing who
| you work for...
| deeviant wrote:
| I work for Blue River Technology, now fully owned by John
| Deere.
|
| Obligatory: Any opinions I express on HN are my own and not
| representative of my employer.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm curious what you think of our approach. Still early but the
| machine is outside in the fields and even on the shortest day
| of the year it traveled 20km on solar power.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634450
| grizzles wrote:
| If you have that much excess power I wonder if you could
| solve the precision water problem with tanks that top up by
| wringing it out of atmosphere in humid climates.
|
| Perhaps cooled coils:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_water_generator
|
| Wind power to shake the water off
| deeviant wrote:
| I think that looks a lot more like the right direction.
|
| I would say that the precision part of Ag robotics is the
| most important part and the success of this project is likely
| going to be resting on that entirely.
|
| It boils down to something like:
|
| 1. Can you sense and classify (i.e. Deep learning based
| vision)
|
| 2. After that, can you turn a pixel into field coordinates.
| (Pose-> gps/encoder/imu/etc)
|
| 3. Can you act accurately/quick/effectively enough
| (kill/treat mechanism, electromechnical design)
|
| Then it's can you do it reliably enough. Then it's can you do
| it fast enough. Then its can you do it cost effectively
| enough.
|
| Farmers won't mess with anything not reliable. They generally
| aren't interested in anything with worse performance than
| existing processes, even if greener/cheaper (unless they are
| significantly so). They most especially will not mess with
| anything that doesn't generate value in their eyes and they
| are very good at understanding what generates value and what
| doesn't.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| That all makes sense, thank you.
|
| Personally I've been really pushing for "community
| supported development", where a community crowd funds an
| idea. Like the Godot video game engine or Octoprint. We're
| applying to non profit fiscal hosts now. (I expect we may
| fork the project and have a for profit version in the
| future, but I'm all about maintaining a complete open
| source system as a non profit project. See the Dronecode
| foundation for an example of a split profit/non-profit
| project.)
|
| I want to have a robot for myself and for others that can
| manage a one to five acre plot using high volume organic
| production along the lines of methods popularized by Eliot
| Coleman, JM Fortier, or Charles Dowding. I'm leaning
| towards no-dig (Dowding) but it will take a lot of
| experimentation to see what really works best.
|
| But I say all this because I think a lot of companies are
| going to be focused on meeting market demand for existing
| farming needs. I'm hoping that for our non profit work we
| are pushing the envelope for highly ecological development,
| supported by enthusiastic believers in our mission. I've
| been learning about reduced till and no till agriculture
| and it seems super promising for a robot like ours. My hope
| is that long term, we can help build a system that allows
| these techniques to scale.
|
| That said, the need for a precision vision system is even
| greater in this scenario. There's going to be a lot of
| variety in what our system needs to identify and do!
| Luckily vision is the thing I really enjoy learning. I
| think if I can drive prototyping and I can get a broader
| community going, we have a good shot of getting a whole
| system going. At the very least I think our open source
| vehicle is very good, and will be a solid base platform for
| people once we release the V2 research vehicle.
|
| See my vision learning project I've been working on the
| last couple years: https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-
| rover/
| jredwards wrote:
| Yeah, but I'm not trying to save the world. I'm just trying to
| play with robots and eat tomatoes. If you're looking for
| something consequential, this isn't the right project.
| fit2rule wrote:
| The farm is the robot: permaculture.
| oxymoran wrote:
| I don't get it, what does it do? Automatically water plants? You
| can do that with a sub irrigated planter with zero electricity
| and achieve fantastic yields.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| From the video, I'm puzzled why they would water plants with a
| robotic nozzle spraying on the plant/leaves. Watering works
| better the way it does now: run a pipe along the plants and water
| the soil.
| bobiny wrote:
| Leaves probably want some moisture too. If you run pipes
| straight to the stem you'll have to rearrange them each time
| you changes here individual plants are which is harder to
| automate.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Well, my understanding (and common advice) is actually not to
| water the leaves at all if possible as that has no benefit
| apart from helping diseases set in.
| bserge wrote:
| Depends on the plant.
|
| Leaves absorb water, too, fwiw.
| bobiny wrote:
| You can damage the plant if you water leaves in bright
| sunshine, because water will act as a lens and leaves will
| get burned. Otherwise I'd follow nature: plants get water
| when it rains, so leaves should have some water too.
| debacle wrote:
| Watering at nightfall when the ambient temperature is
| below 70F is a recipe for rot as well.
|
| When it's cold, you water in the morning. When it's hot,
| you water at night.
| bobiny wrote:
| I didn't know thank you.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Depending on the species it may make sense to raise the
| humidity in the air (that's especially valid for indoor
| plants or tropical plants in greenhouses, hence misting).
| But watering the leaves is not needed and is pretty much
| useless to the plant. In nature of course plants get wet
| under the rain but, as mentioned, this helps diseases
| (moulds, mildew, virii, etc) take hold so in general it's
| best avoided if at all possible.
| sgt wrote:
| Just use an automated irrigation controller with misters.
| carapace wrote:
| The website trips one of my major heuristics for caution: it
| doesn't say who is behind it. There's no "about us" section (that
| I could see, maybe it's there and I missed it?)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My brother showed me this, a couple of years ago.
|
| Cool stuff.
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| * sudo apt install farmbot * farmbot --sew strawberries
| * farmbot --pick straweberries
| [deleted]
| kortex wrote:
| I've built robots. I've built greenhouses. I like software and
| the occasional bit of farming. Thirs looks cute and fun, and I
| hope they iterate, but it's not really solving the right
| problems, and introduces its own.
|
| 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm. Maybe in a hydro setup
| built on concrete slab, in which case, why robot?
|
| 2 - needs a way to cover more ground. If it's not able to travel
| linearly indefinitely in one direction along a bed, there's no
| way to scale.
|
| 3 - grit. Precision CnC mechanisms and dirt do not mix. You can't
| keep farm things clean (unless hydro, and even then, things get
| wet and caked with fertilizer salt)
|
| Ditch the linear ways for something like bike tires. There's an
| open source solar farm robot which rolls around weeding (can't
| find at the moment, maybe was a video). Not limited by a box.
| They need robust mechanisms which can stand up to farm abuse and
| are easy to service, grease, and replace (unless you hermetically
| seal the components, which is harder than it sounds).
|
| Weeds are actually pretty easy to manage.
|
| If someone wants to make an impact in the farm tech space, come
| up with a cheaper alternative for scooping and dumping dirt. A
| ride-on tractor can be had used for $500-800. But as soon as you
| start talking loaders, it's $2-3000 used, and tens of thousands
| for new. Also the smallest tend to be a 4 foot wide bucket and a
| few hundred pounds lift. I want something half or a quarter of
| that. Able to scoop 50 lbs of dirt, repeatedly, and dig
| holes/trenches. That would have a massive impact in agrarian
| communities around the world.
| bobiny wrote:
| This is a for small hipster raised bed farming in back yard.
| Maybe it doesn't have to scale to a size of a commercial farm
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > small hipster raised bed farming in back yard
|
| As a small hipster raised bed farmer (or rather, gardener), I
| actually looked into this at one point - the $1500 price tag
| put me off of it really quick. There's no way that kind of
| investment makes sense unless you're planning to sell the
| vegetables to recoup your investment - and it's doubtful that
| the machine will realistically last more than five years or
| so, so you'll have to replace it at some point in the fairly
| near future.
| bobiny wrote:
| I think you pay to get hands off garden.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| In that case, you're better off just buying your produce
| at the grocery store.
| bobiny wrote:
| But you can watch it grow.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| As a fellow backyard raised bed hipster, part of the point
| for me is going out and tending it. I struggle to see the
| value in this unless it's about scaling.
| lifty wrote:
| You will tend the robot instead.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Ah, the Minecraft Modpack methodology.
| kortex wrote:
| When you start off playing Stardew Valley but end up
| playing Factorio/Satisfactory.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Some day I hope everyone has a backyard farm to supply at
| least some of their food. Some of those people will need
| assistance to do it.
| bobiny wrote:
| Community gardens.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| This! I started bookmarking community gardens in Oakland.
| There's quite a few and I hope more space can be
| allocated for them in the future!
| bobiny wrote:
| My dream is to make gardens under geodesic domes. In UK
| there is Eden project with 2 domes: one has mediterranean
| climate and another tropical. Imagine being able to grow
| mangoes and pineapples almost anywhere (it maybe too
| expensive in some climates, but maybe just growing
| strawberries there would be nice).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWr67v620kY
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'd love to figure out how to do this in such a way that
| some or all of the warmth for them could come from waste-
| heat sources. Seems like such a waste to build a dome for
| growing local food and then have to heat it through the
| night with conventional fuels.
| spelunker wrote:
| Same - I enjoy working in my garden because it's a break
| from my office tech job!
|
| Robot aside, the UI to plan your planting is pretty great
| though.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm working on a different farming robot. Since my office
| is at the farm and half of my work is doing something
| outside with the machine, it's a pretty idyllic setting
| for a job!
| clifdweller wrote:
| I thought the same thing. I could care less about the
| robot but a good garden planning app would be nice and
| let you track when you water, plant, harvest/ yield of
| crop from year to year
| blacktriangle wrote:
| For me, playing with tech is part of the reason I have a
| backyard farm. So far I've just played with very basic
| things like sunken hose irrigation with timers hooked up to
| a rain gauge so it only waters when there's no rain, but
| I'd love to have the time to look more into the robotics
| side of things.
|
| For those of us who sling CRUD sites all day long, the
| opportunity to dig into more machine/computer interaction
| is just fun.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Fair enough! I work at a robotics company, and I already
| feel guilt for not putting more effort into my existing
| homeassistant and networking setup. But if you were
| wanting to scratch an itch, I could definitely picture
| this being rewarding.
| bobiny wrote:
| I get automatic watering, especially in arid climates, but
| planting and weed plucking is excessive imo.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| But automatic watering is a solved problem. You can set
| up an automatic drip irrigation system very cheaply.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| For a small bed like the one in the demonstration, surely
| that's more simply managed with a drip hose and maybe a
| timer?
|
| Drip hoses are also better from a water consumption point
| of view since it goes straight to the soil-- you don't
| lose any to runoff or evaporation.
| bluGill wrote:
| Large farms put the hoses in the ground - the water never
| touches the air (well I assume some will seep to the
| surface, but not much), instead it is applied only close
| to the roots. You need to be very careful to apply your
| seeds just above the hose, but this is a solved problem:
| modern farming can place each seed to within 2cm of where
| intended over large fields even when the tractor is
| planting 50 rows at a time at 20km/h.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| As a tech-crazed wanna-be hipster gardener, the value is
| pretending to do it "better" than the backyard raised bed
| hipsters.
|
| Observe: "Using the manual controls, you can move FarmBot
| and operate its tools and peripherals in real-time. Scare
| birds away while at work, take photos of your veggies, turn
| the lights on for a night time harvest, or _simply impress
| your friends and neighbors with a quick demo._ "
| bobiny wrote:
| Maybe you wouldn't get a garden otherwise if you've got
| no skill, no experience living on a farm. This way you
| get to have a garden without know how to do it and
| without a choir part like watering regularly. Now you can
| water whenever you feel like it.
| qq4 wrote:
| Slightly off topic, but what is it about raised beds? Why not
| till and fertilize the soil you already have?
| lwb wrote:
| Texas checking in -- the dirt in my backyard is full of
| clay and totally unsuitable for growing anything other than
| grass and weeds. Many places are like this.
| afrodc_ wrote:
| Finally got a home and am finding the same thing here in
| central Texas. At least with the crap soil the builders
| use to form the land around the foundation. My plan is to
| attempt to grow more deep rooted plants so their roots
| can break up the soil and die off when I trim them. Then
| aeration and topsoil composting. Still a work in progress
| so I have no idea if it'll work.
| qq4 wrote:
| That makes sense, and maybe I'm sweeping aside many
| places similar without thinking about them. In the
| Midwest I've always had good luck in the ground.
| f-securus wrote:
| The back loves raised beds compared to the alternative.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are a few advantages: the beds are raised do you
| don't have to bend over as far to tend them. The beds make
| it obvious where the place to walk is. The beds mean
| instead of rows of plants you have a contained solid mess
| which in turn means more plants per area (this is good for
| some plants, bad for others). Tilling is bad for soil and
| should be avoided whenever possible, the beds make it
| easier to not disturb the soil in ways that need tilling to
| fix. The beds allow you to have the type of soil best for
| the type of plant you are trying to grow - fertilizer
| doesn't change soil types.
|
| Nothing magical about it, there are some advantages to
| raised beds, but other than the ergonomics everything can
| be done in any other type of garden if you try.
| afrodc_ wrote:
| Why is tilling bad for the soil? Genuinely curious as
| I've seen it as an option for my terrible salty clay soil
| at my house.
| bluGill wrote:
| Because it destories the root structure built up in the
| ground over the years. Those roots then break down
| quickly, and in turn the whole microbe profile is
| different. Sometimes tilling is still the best thing to
| do, but it isn't a good thing and should be avoided.
|
| On a different note, tilling also costs large amounts of
| energy. The less tilling your do, the less CO2 you are
| putting into the atmosphere (even if you do the tilling
| by hand with a shovel you are still emitting more CO2
| than if you just sat in your easy-chair)
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >Because it destories the root structure built up in the
| ground over the years. Those roots then break down
| quickly, and in turn the whole microbe profile is
| different. Sometimes tilling is still the best thing to
| do, but it isn't a good thing and should be avoided.
|
| Does this still apply when talking about farming? I just
| started growing food this year, but once I've harvested
| the first crop and am planting the second crop of the
| season, the roots in the ground are surely going to break
| down quickly in any case, because I've harvested all of
| their tops, no?
|
| >even if you do the tilling by hand with a shovel you are
| still emitting more CO2 than if you just sat in your
| easy-chair
|
| I'm sorry, what? By that logic I should also never
| exercise.
| gbrown wrote:
| It disrupts the fungal life and dries it out, while also
| increasing erosion and weed pressure. It's not that you
| can't ever till, but it's generally to be avoided.
|
| In the case of clay, deep mulch will do wonders, and the
| earthworms will gently improve the soil over time.
| afrodc_ wrote:
| I'm not sure if you know, but is there a way to promote
| earthworms in my soil? It's pretty compacted after the
| build and apparently they don't like that, so I'm trying
| to aerate and let my grass grow longer to break up what
| it can before I trim and let the roots die. For the
| garden I'm also planning on planting plants with deep
| roots, like sunflowers, to improve the soil.
| blagie wrote:
| I live in an area which has been urban for ages. The soil,
| more than a few inches down, is full of toxic chemicals,
| including but not limited to lead.
|
| Raised bed, you know what you get.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| The last place I lived the house had been around for close
| to 100 years. Thats 100 years of humans using a 1/2 acre
| plot to fix cars, wash cloths, have sewage over flows, car
| mechanic mishaps, etc. The soil was not one that I would
| want to get food from.
|
| Also, when I moved to my current location if you watch the
| builders you see they first put down a foot or two of red
| clay/dirt/rock. Its no good for growing. Even if it was,
| after they get done building the house they have to grade
| the outside and have all kinds of construction debris that
| gets mixed in and covered up. You can't trust what you
| don't know.
| kortex wrote:
| That's exactly what I have and I'm telling you, it's still
| impractical. One, my greenhouse is a 24x13' footprint (which
| is pretty much the minimum useable with for a walk-in), with
| 3 bed rows 16' long, 2 or 4' wide. So I'd need 3 robot
| setups. Beds are long and skinny to facilitate human
| ergonomics. The shown examples are way too wide for raised
| beds, unless they are the walk-on type. So I'd still benefit
| from a robot which could straddle the bed and be easy to move
| from one bed to another.
| bobiny wrote:
| Maybe you need 1 robot with wide legs?
| maxioatic wrote:
| It's open source and designed to be modular/expandable.
| What's stopping you from building one to fit your needs?
|
| Here's some pictures[0] of people building larger scale
| ones:
|
| - 10x20' inside a greenhouse
|
| - 1.5x18m outdoor
|
| [0] - https://forum.farmbot.org/t/photo-contest-post-your-
| best-far...
| manimm wrote:
| https://youtu.be/3mrvd0B6DuQ ?
| 34679 wrote:
| >I want something half or a quarter of that. Able to scoop 50
| lbs of dirt, repeatedly, and dig holes/trenches.
|
| https://www.toro.com/en/professional-contractor/compact-util...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm designing an open source farming robot (Acorn by Twisted
| Fields) and I'm looking at doing Charles Dowding's no-dig
| farming method. Instead of tillage they drop more compost on
| top of the beds each season. In that case it would be super
| helpful for our robot to be able to scoop from a pile of
| compost and distribute it over the beds. You think there's a
| lot of value in that? I'm still mulling it over.
|
| Here's a nice overview of a no-dig farm:
| https://youtu.be/u79tiVcj8bY
| 34679 wrote:
| Yes. There are plenty of things that need to be spread on
| farms. I have a friend who made huge piles of bio-char for
| spreading in his hops field. Hops fields are full of poles
| supporting the trellis that supports the plants, so there's
| a lot to dodge. Doing it with the tractor bucket required a
| lot of manual touch up after. Also, in landscaping and
| construction, the ability to move soil, mulch, and gravel
| autonomously would be extremely helpful. Spreading it
| evenly would be icing on the cake.
| skrebbel wrote:
| > 1 - there are no straight lines on a farm.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean, to me this sounds like "everybody
| knows that birds can't fly". But I might just be totally
| misunderstanding you.
|
| Do you mean "there are no straight lines on farms near where I
| live"? Cause, well, half my relatives are farmers and their
| farms are very much made up of straight lines.
|
| For context, here's a google image search for Dutch potato
| fields:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=aardappelveld&source=lnms&tb...
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Those rows are "straight" in a way that looks roughly right
| from up high, or from head height, but you can see the exact
| problem they're talking about in several of those pictures
| you linked; farms are "straight" to a few centimeters over a
| few tens of meters, but they're not "straight" down to sub-
| single centimeter deviation over 30 meters. And while it may
| be possible to have _some_ farms operate that way, how does
| this system interact with places where that won't work? What
| about places like the Palouse region of Washington, where
| you'll see farms stretching for tens of kilometers, but they
| have to do so over rolling hills[1]?
|
| Large, flat, level areas aren't that common, while major-to-
| minor deviations from flat-and-level are very common. The
| grandparent comment is I believe rightly asking "how does
| this 'farm bot' solve the problems of real farms?" I agree,
| this looks less like a farm-bot and more like a "serious
| gardener bot", which is a different niche.
|
| [1] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palouse_hills_n
| orthe...
| nickspacek wrote:
| I always thought these folks might be onto something, though
| I'm not sure how successful the approach has been:
| https://www.opensourceecology.org/
| kortex wrote:
| I've been following them (for quite some time actually) and I
| admire their vision, but from what I've observed, they have
| run out of steam in the past few years.
|
| Also their approach is great if you have a metal shop and
| lots of raw materials and components ready to go, but for
| their goal of helping mechanized developing countries, I
| think it falls flat. The first rule of pricing hardware is
| economy of scale wins. Being able to fabricobble a farm
| tractor from a Toyota pickup is way more valuable than
| building one from scratch using steel box beams.
|
| I think their approach would be better served by creating an
| "API standard" for mechanical interfaces, like an ISO
| standard of sorts, so you could fabricobble your prime mover,
| your bucket loader, your hydraulics, from whatever you happen
| to have, and be able to swap out with anyone else's
| peripheral. Like the IDDS, but more down to Earth :) :
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Docking_System_S.
| ..
| bobiny wrote:
| I follow them for some time, they seem to be doing something,
| but I don't understand their grand vision.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I think this is geared at personal, specifically small-scale
| backyard farms.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> there are no straight lines on a farm._
|
| The simple AB line served the agricultural guidance industry
| (think GPS) for _many_ years before systems capable of handling
| complex curves arrived on the market.
| nobody_nowhere wrote:
| Re the weeding robot -- you may be thinking of
| https://tertill.com
|
| iRobot founders' new thing. Small, and undercapitalized, but
| promising.
| kortex wrote:
| Neat, and promising, though not the one I was thinking of.
|
| I think it might have been this one, Acorn by Twisted Fields:
|
| https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-
| pr...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsyEIgKVM5E
| nobody_nowhere wrote:
| Very cool, thanks for sharing!
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Hey that's my robot, thank you for sharing it!
|
| I just published a new article to go with our latest video.
| This one takes a closer look at the vehicle subsystems.
|
| https://community.twistedfields.com/t/a-closer-look-at-
| acorn...
|
| Edit: just submitted it as an article on HN if anyone wants
| to give it their vote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27634450
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Tertill is cool and all, but for a new garden, you still have
| to weed until the payplants are big enough to trigger
| "collisions". There's no magic in sensing: It just kills new
| growth.
| Defenestresque wrote:
| You can just surround the new plants with the plant guards
| that come with the robot.
| nobody_nowhere wrote:
| Yeah, seems to assume you're going to put protectors around
| the 'good' plants or something at first. Still, I could see
| some interesting swarm behavior opportunities for the right
| types of plants and growth stages...
| spelunker wrote:
| It also looks like you need to give it room to move around?
| Look at all that space that could be used for more veggies!
| schmorptron wrote:
| I'm guessing some veggies need to be planted that far
| apart so there's enough nutrients in the ground for all
| of them to grow fully
| tony0x02 wrote:
| And probably in mining too
| weatherlight wrote:
| Your argument is a strawman, this obviously isn't for
| commercial farming. This is for personal use for people who
| have a 120 sqft+ in their backyard.....
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Which is why this product is named "gardenbot"?
| weatherlight wrote:
| if read the home page:
|
| "At home Grow food for yourself, your family, and your
| community by installing FarmBot on a raised bed, urban
| rooftop, or in a small greenhouse at home. Fully automated,
| hyper-local food production has never been so attainable."
|
| This is the antithesis of commercial farming.
| justsomeperson wrote:
| How about something like this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidercam
|
| Where it can be suspended above the field and moved to any
| point above the plant and can be raised as crops grow?
| kortex wrote:
| Not the worst idea, though IIRC that style of robot needs a
| fair amount of tension in the wires in order to minimize
| droop.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a weird sort of reverse classism I saw in my relatives
| going up. You might summarize it as 'people without dirt under
| their nails don't understand shit'.
|
| As someone who went through endurance sports, being the fix-it
| guy, and a CS program I always sort of had one foot in both
| worlds and didn't really engage in this kind of rhetoric.
|
| But as I've been accumulating more woodworking tools and
| getting a lot of dirt under my nails building a giant garden,
| I'm starting to see their point.
|
| This device is going to gum up, being exposed to UV all day,
| dust, wind, and rain. The tolerances on this device are way
| tighter than any in situ environment is going to allow. And
| you're going to kneel on that track and it's gonna hurt like a
| motherfucker.
|
| This will be like a pet turtle you have to keep flipping right
| side up, not like a roomba.
| dnautics wrote:
| > This device is going to gum up
|
| You say that like this device hasn't been around for years,
| accumulating revisions, upgrades, and user stories.
| hinkley wrote:
| Look at the videos. That's an outdoor laboratory
| environment.
| jve wrote:
| Directly from article: "And because everything is made from
| aluminum, stainless steel, and UV resistant ABS, FarmBot will
| last for years in outdoor environments."
| antsar wrote:
| > This will be like a pet turtle you have to keep flipping
| right side up, not like a roomba.
|
| Having recently bought (and returned) the flagship Roomba, I
| struggle to see the difference between those two.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| agree completely. if it's for personal farming--it's too
| expensive because tending to a handful of plants is trivial.
| sfgweilr4f wrote:
| The very definition of hacking applied to gardening. I think we
| need more agricultural robotics. This is a useful beginning and
| its been iterating for few years. Good stuff.
|
| Some of the complaints about linear garden beds is just not
| valid. Different crops can definitely be linear, even grid-like.
| This idea can be scaled up with increasing complexity as needed.
|
| It will be interesting to see where this kind of idea goes as the
| projects themselves itself grow up.
| sublimefire wrote:
| The only missing thing to this is a gun. To automatically shoot
| at random animals interested in your garden.
| PopePompus wrote:
| Yes, planting, watering and weeding are the easy parts. Keeping
| deer, birds, rabbits and raccoons from eating everything is a
| much bigger issue, in my experience.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Mobile electric fencing is your friend, here. No need for
| guns.
| maxioatic wrote:
| Happy to see this get some attention! I've been following it for
| the last 6ish years, and it's been cool to see their progress.
|
| I think a few commenters are missing the point of this project.
| It's not a commercial robot and it's not meant to mass produce
| food. It seems maybe the use the word "farm" is being taken too
| literally. Their four stated applications are:
|
| 1. Education
|
| 2. Home use
|
| 3. Research
|
| 4. Accessibility
|
| This is the description from their white paper [0]:
|
| > The vision of this project is to create an open and accessible
| technology aiding everyone to grow food and to grow food for
| everyone. The mission is to grow a community that produces free
| and open-source hardware plans, software, data, and documentation
| enabling everyone to build and operate a farming machine.
|
| [0] - https://farm.bot/blogs/news/the-farmbot-whitepaper
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I had a friend reach out to me, because his dad is a farmer and
| needed a programmer to work on his tractors, or something like
| that. I gave him some suggestions such as posting upwork, and
| fverr. I would hate to be in his position. I don't see anyone
| with the required electrical engineering background, willing to
| work on a one off project for a farmer. As far as I know, he did
| not find anyone.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I get that.
|
| I do this kind of small consulting (firmware/hardware design &
| integration, etc.) on the side from my day job. I find that the
| biggest problem is discovery. There are many individuals and
| small businesses out there that need simple control systems
| built, but the only firms they can find are the ones with lots
| of marketing but they're too big to care about a 20-hour
| project.
|
| If your friend still has this need, my contact info is in my
| profile. I'm in the US and happy to help.
| stingrae wrote:
| out of curiosity, what did he need done and how much was he
| offering? I do think the kind of SWE you need for that kind of
| job is unlikely to hang out on fiverrr or upwork.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I don't know the exact details. But I can find out, if you
| know someone that might be interested in such a project.
|
| "My dad, who I copied on this email had a quick question
| regarding hiring a programmer to write a small program for a
| farm equipment control system" is what I responded to.
| gpm wrote:
| You're on a forum filled with bored software engineers,
| posting details right here is a pretty good idea ;)
|
| If contract work isn't against the rules for them (not
| sure), and the job is otherwise reasonable (feasible, not
| too open ended, not throwing up giant red flags) I bet he
| would get some bites by posting to the monthly "who is
| hiring" threads too.
|
| Depending on the details of the request I might be willing
| to do it, more because I think it might be interesting to
| work on a "farm equipment control system" than anything
| else. Coincidentally I gave notice at my job a week ago so
| I'll have some free time coming up.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Okay, great. I just emailed him to find out if he hired
| someone. If he hasn't if there a way to private message
| on here? I can forward your contact info to him.
| gpm wrote:
| My email is in my profile (i.e. click on my username).
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| great, thank you. I forwarded him your contact info.
| gpm wrote:
| I appreciate it :)
| gpm wrote:
| Just noticed HeyLaughingBoy's post too, from his
| description I'd say there's a pretty good chance his
| experience is more on point than mine (it is a bit hard
| to tell from the limited description here though).
|
| Not to torpedo my chances, but you might want to forward
| his contact info on too.
| wjaugustyn wrote:
| Very cool, but they should market it for what it is -- backyard
| farming for people that like automation. Large scale farming is
| pretty damn automated already. We can probably really improve on
| pesticide use, soil health, pollination etc (things that relate
| to optimising the ecological interactions between organisms).
| [deleted]
| donw wrote:
| It's not very "open source" when your datasets aren't available
| for download (unless that has changed?)
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| That video is so over the top it feels like a movie trailer for a
| summer blockbuster, complete with dramatic action music and the
| "take back control" slogan. Things like that make it harder to
| trust.
| diydsp wrote:
| the popups in the bottom left announcing people purchasing them
| in the past are so distracting I couldn't watch this or trust
| it. Even the big travel websites shed that awful attempt at
| social proof.
|
| They even give away their own game:
|
| > or simply impress your friends and neighbors with a quick
| demo
| swiley wrote:
| That's interesting, it's a large CNC machine and not a mobile
| robot. That makes sense.
| WJW wrote:
| Does it? The current construction severely limits the scale at
| which it could operate, so it will run out of work to do pretty
| quickly. That means it'll be idle most of the time. If you have
| a similar complexity robot but mobile, it could be trucking
| around a much larger field.
| swiley wrote:
| I don't think most people want to turn their yard into a
| serious farm. This is great for backyard gardens. I'd get a
| smaller table top version for my apartment.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Yeah, I too wonder how small you can currently get with the
| smallest Express version they offer.
|
| I'd love to get something like this into my apartment,
| around 0.5x1 meters in size, and with a refillable water
| tank.
| oxymoran wrote:
| No it's still pretty useless. If you want a legitimate
| backyard garden, the rain gutter grow system is the way to
| go. No robot, no electricity, no weeding, automated
| watering.
| kortex wrote:
| Are you talking about the system where you put buckets
| above a rain gutter which has a float valve to set the
| level? E.g.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyOIRVjatdg
|
| That's actually quite clever! Though I'm not sure how
| they avoid the gutters from turning into algae blooming,
| mosquito-breeding cesspools. :p
|
| Edit: Oh I guess you can just cover the gutter in plastic
| and ensure there is enough water throughput to stay
| fairly fresh: https://permaculturefoodforest.wordpress.co
| m/2016/04/14/rain...
| swiley wrote:
| TBH for my indoor garden watering it by hand is fine
| (really good for my mental health honestly) I just like
| the idea of playing with the robot.
| bobiny wrote:
| I don't think it's a problem to make this robot wider and
| longer if there will be demand
| solomonb wrote:
| I do a lot of home gardening. In my front yard I have four 10x5'
| raised beds for annuals. I setup drip tape on a timer and mulch
| with straw. Beyond that I do almost zero work to maintain the
| plants. Occasional weeding when I see weeds starting to crowd out
| a productive plant and certain plants need to be pruned to form.
|
| I really can't see the value add from adding a CNC machine to
| each raised bed.
| rmah wrote:
| Pretty cool, but isn't that more a _gardening_ robot than a
| _farm_ robot? I wonder how it handles weeding chores...
| maxwelljoslyn wrote:
| Paging TaylorAlexander... what's your take?
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Looks cool but the cost/time to set this up seems way overkill
| for how small the plots are.
|
| The smallest kit is $1500 USD.
|
| The watering seems like the actual place where time could be
| saved but that could be accomplished with a basic automatic
| sprinkler.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I'm genuinely confused by this whole pitch. What practical
| problem does this solve?
|
| Planting seeds in a bed that size is at most an hour or two of
| work. Raised beds don't suffer from that many weeds, so weeding
| is a couple of hours per week at most. And drip irrigation with a
| timer can be had for a few dollars.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| This solves the practical problem of having a single robot that
| can plant, weed and water a raised bed. Looking through their
| twitter posts linked on the website, they've good a bunch of
| happy users .
| xgulfie wrote:
| "having a robot" is not a problem statement
| RyanGoosling wrote:
| It's cool in a technical way, but is it practical? I think drip
| irrigation is more practical. Or other irrigation methods other
| than water over canopy.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| I know cnc and farming, and I really don't see this product
| surviving. I can't find a shovel that lasts more than a few
| months on my small farm, I don't know how a big 3d printer is
| going to cut it in anything like real agricultural conditions. I
| would love to be wrong though, garden robots would be great,
| especially if they had lasers for slugs. Actually, forget the
| rest of the robot, all I really want is a slug laser.
| foxhop wrote:
| Slug lazers ~= small flock of ducks
| lb0 wrote:
| Not species-appropriate usually without enough roaming space
| and a lake .. so not for everyone :(
|
| Btw, did I see the robot harvesting in the end? Everything
| else is fine, but at least this don't take away from me! :>
| bserge wrote:
| Hens would be less destructive, I think.
| zajio1am wrote:
| From what i heard, they usually destroy every green on you
| garden first and only after that turn to slugs.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Ah, biological warfare.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| _the finger on the monkey paw curls_
|
| your slugs now shoot lasers
| bobiny wrote:
| Try Fiskars, they make light but sturdy gardening equipment
| rytis wrote:
| Just a crazy idea - they say you can do farming from anywhere
| using their app. So... What about Farming-as-a-Service. You
| assign users small patches, where they can do whatever they
| like, and how they like it, and any surviving vegetables are
| shipped to them. Sounds silly, and is mostly for lolz, may not
| be sustainable either, but who knows :) ?...
| dhicks6345789 wrote:
| Here in the UK, allotments are currently back in fashion -
| garden-sized strips of land assigned to people who rent them
| for a small amount each year. Currently in demand again,
| especially in cities where flat-dwellers might not have their
| own garden - you can spend a few hours a week getting out of
| the house and getting some exercise / fresh air. A
| traditional allotment does take a bit of a time commitment,
| and of course not every day is sunny, and free allotments in
| some areas are very limited, so maybe combine allotments with
| a farming robot. Get a parcel of land, maybe a way outside
| town (but accessible via public transport), split it up into
| allotments that people can farm daily remotely or come and
| visit for a nice day out. The sort of thing a farm with a
| farm shop or pick-your-own operation could diversify into -
| rent out strips of land for remote users to tinker around on,
| handle shipping them their ripe produce for a reasonable fee.
| rahimiali wrote:
| Clever idea. How do I get my harvest once it's ready? Does
| someone have to harvest the plants for me and mail them to
| me?
| schmorptron wrote:
| In the video on the site they show a robot arm plucking
| carrots out of the ground and placing them into a basket,
| but that might have been from one of the research basket.
| But shipping them to you sounds reasonable, although
| packaging them so they don't rot and the distance might
| nullify any real ecological advantage.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Yeah I mean they are [supposed to be] testing anyway, might
| as well rent out the equipment during the experiment and sell
| the produce.
| thepete2 wrote:
| I don't have much garden experience, and I could _possibly_
| imagine this thing surviving in a greenhouse. But on the
| outside I agree with you, at the least there will be some
| intervention required.
| dhicks6345789 wrote:
| > all I really want is a slug laser
|
| Even better: a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs:
|
| http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/tmp/slugbot.html
|
| The project is from circa-2000, I remember being impressed by
| the idea at the time, and I'd have thought slug-hunting robots
| would be more of a common thing by now - turns out robotics for
| agriculture are hard.
| woutgaze wrote:
| > a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs
|
| Isn't that called a duck?
| bserge wrote:
| Ha.
|
| But actually, if most people weren't so averse to
| biological organisms, perhaps we would've had computer
| controlled ducks, rats, hens and other small animals by
| now.
|
| Why bother reinventing the whole thing when you could just
| replace (part of) their brains.
|
| Experimentation would be pretty gruesome though.
| bsedlm wrote:
| what's wrong with language-controlled humans?
|
| oh right, humans can't be property
| galenlynch wrote:
| Ducks already eat slugs, no BMI required.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| I dream of cyber-moles.
|
| Seriously. If you've ever watched utility crews
| installing or repairing underground fiber, and then had
| moles colonize your yard, there is only one logical
| conclusion: silly humans, you are doing it wrong.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is e-coli (and a few similar things). Animal
| poop is full of it, and we don't want that in our food
| supply. Machines don't leave e-coli behind to contaminate
| our food like biological organisms do. (hint wash your
| fresh food!)
| the_only_law wrote:
| > I would love to be wrong though, garden robots would be
| great, especially if they had lasers for slugs
|
| I've had a similar idea before, for roaches, but I'm just not
| sure how it could work. Surely any laser with enough power
| output to kill something would cause a decent amount of
| collateral as well?
| saalweachter wrote:
| You could make them pack hunters, with the expectation that
| 8-12 separate slug/roach lasers would end up focused on a
| target slug at a time.
|
| That way you'd be performing target recognition from multiple
| angles and mis-classifications would tend to only result in
| the not-slug being hit with 10-20% power.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Which is the problem with they mosquito shooting turret, as
| well.
|
| I hate mosquitos as much as slugs - but I do not like people
| to loose their eyesight over it.
|
| There would have to be many reliable savety mechanism, before
| this can become a thing.
|
| Otherwise I will have trained one, to target ticks as well.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| This project has been around nearly ten years. They've sold
| hundreds (or possibly thousands) and raised well over a million
| dollars. Looking through their forum, I'd guess they
| continually identify faulty parts (O-rings, moisture sensor,
| belt alignment) and improve these in successive designs. They
| make effective suggestions for maintenance and replacement of
| parts.
|
| I do believe this won't necessarily save someone time. It
| probably just turns two hours of vegetable gardening per week
| into one hour of vegetable gardening plus one hour of robot
| gardening. I believe there are enough people in the world who
| enjoy gardening their mechatronics for this to have a
| respectable future, but I agree that it will never compete with
| any commercial venture
|
| ... unless someone invents an OpenCV saffron stigma identifier.
| musingsole wrote:
| Everyone's always bitter how technology's stepping stones fit
| into particular niches and manage to eek by -- providing
| inspiration for better systems to come when there is a proper
| problem and ecosystem to support them isn't enough for these
| types. It's like questioning the purpose and validity of the
| moonshot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Agreed, this is a nice hobby project but it is nowhere near
| ruggedized enough to survive the weather, let alone farming for
| more than the period of the demonstration. Too fragile, too
| many delicate exposed parts, grooves aimed upwards where
| moisture and dirt will collect and so on.
|
| Props for trying though.
| schmorptron wrote:
| From the video it seems like there's a model that can switch
| tools - so if you install a night vision camera, strong laser
| and train some sort of fancy model to detect slugs that are not
| currently obscured by leaves, you might be able to laser them.
| ehnto wrote:
| I would recommend against the CSS transform the website has on
| the YouTube videos, that's degrading performance by a margin and
| is really not worth it.
|
| Also there's no scrollbar at all, that's super silly.
| adolph wrote:
| Maybe this product is an April fools joke gone Theranos? The
| first thing I noticed was the overhead water sprayer, which is a
| SFG anti-pattern.
|
| _Avoid overhead watering with automatic sprinkler systems. Those
| systems are designed for large areas (like lawns) that need a
| broad application of water, not your Square Foot Garden that's
| designed to take up little space. The overhead spray never gets
| to the root zone beneath your plants' leaves, so the watering
| winds up being insufficient. That overhead spray also quickly
| evaporates, leading to water waste, and leaves foliage wet which
| can lead to pest and disease issues._
|
| https://squarefootgardening.org/2020/05/watering-methods-for...
| foxhop wrote:
| This isn't how food grows. It doesn't require a robot.
|
| Source: I grow food at home and share how on this YouTube channel
| - https://youtu.be/q3sR5wJwJoo
| timbre1234 wrote:
| Look: if they aren't using lasers to shoot the weeds, I'm not
| interested.
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