[HN Gopher] Acorn, our open source precision farming rover
___________________________________________________________________
Acorn, our open source precision farming rover
Author : lioeters
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-12-28 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.twistedfields.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.twistedfields.com)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Generally the designers seem to be making some good decisions,
| such as cheap parts, identical corner pieces, etc...
|
| There are interesting developments around using precision
| targeted spraying at individual weeds that this robot would be
| good at. The chemical volume and hence weight would be low, so
| you don't need a big diesel tractor!
|
| Similarly, a small robot like this could make daily passes over a
| field, killing weeds when they're still tiny. Again, this reduces
| the power and weight requirements.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| It's useless for the time being but hopes to be useful soon. Hey,
| just like me.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Oh hey, this is my project! Great to see it show up here. This
| post is a bit old. I'm currently working on two big video updates
| (and associated blog posts), but there is a newer update from
| March of this year here:
|
| https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu...
|
| A common question is "okay but what does it _do_?"
|
| The answer is that right now it doesn't do any farming. To do
| farming we need to develop tools. Tools are highly specific to
| the farming process used, and our machine is unlike a tractor or
| a human hand as it has less power than a tractor, more power than
| a human, and doesn't get bored or require any marginal input
| costs like human labor does. This means existing tools aren't
| exactly right and it's going to take a bit of work to get that
| sorted.
|
| Because tools are such a complex part of the system, our plan is
| to finalize and release our autonomous rover without any tools to
| early adopters, and then work with the community to experiment
| and design tools together. Remember that this is an open source
| research project and we encourage and will assist anyone in going
| in to production on their own machines, so early adopters
| designing tools will ensure they have a complete system they can
| manufacture that works for their farming context.
|
| The end goal is a system which can help in every step of the
| farming process in a regenerative organic farming system. This
| includes clearing the rows of any cover crop, planting seeds and
| starts, thinning seedlings and pulling weeds, harvesting, and
| resetting for a new rotation.
|
| It's a lot of work as I'm basically doing all of the design,
| engineering, and fabrication work myself as well as all video
| production and blog work, but as I've mentioned I'm finalizing
| two new videos and one of the new videos is a new easier to
| produce format. I got a little too in to fancy video production
| with four locations and multiple angles on one of the videos and
| realized I need to dial it back and produce simpler more frequent
| videos.
|
| You're welcome to follow me on mastodon where I post photos of
| some of the latest work, as well as personal stuff. Here's a
| picture of the brand new vehicle we have developed that is our
| production intent system, as well as new electronics which have
| just finished production and are in transit to us now. Thanks so
| much for taking a look!
|
| https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109570577090460530
|
| https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109488692996964147
| msla wrote:
| > All of Acorn's basic functions are controlled by Python from a
| Raspberry Pi.
|
| ... which means the Acorn is powered by an Acorn (RISC Machine)
| CPU.
|
| Hacker News: Come For The Hippie-Bots, Stay For The Jokes Based
| On Obsolete Acronyms
| [deleted]
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Totally Awesome! We need more grand projects like this one.
| guenthert wrote:
| 'nother uncooperative web site demanding that I upgrade my
| browser (I can't -- it's running on an EOL Chromebook Pixel). I
| just checked, I still can view Apple.com in all it's glory. Now
| tell me with a straight face that your web site needs to be more
| dynamic, more immersive, more _glorious_ than Apple.com .
| [deleted]
| cachvico wrote:
| Apple has the budget to maintain backwards compatibility, not
| everyone chooses to spend their runway on that.
| malfist wrote:
| Looks interesting, but the article has no details on what it
| currently does. Only vague ideas of what it will do, eventually.
|
| >We are often asked: what does our robot do? At this time Acorn
| is still under development. In the future it will be equipped
| with a smart vision system and robotic tools that will be able to
| plant seeds, destroy weeds, monitor plant health, and much more.
|
| But so far all it looks to be is a solar powered buggy. Would
| love to revisit this when they make it actually do something.
|
| Claiming it's a "precision robot" before claiming it does
| anything is...a choice.
| presidentender wrote:
| It's an all-terrain solar powered buggy with smart behavior
| around faults, GPS pathing, and four-wheel steering. Calling it
| a 'rover' for the time being is fair.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yeah, but in the video on the website, it is not actually
| driving, nor have I found a video of it driving somewhere
| upon a second look.
|
| But it is supposed to be only driving when the sun is
| shining, so maybe we have to wait till spring/summer?
|
| I mean seriously? It surely is more efficient, to not waste
| solar energy by storing the energy in capacitors and not in
| batteries, but that means, it will stop whatever it is doing
| when a cloud comes and it will stay out and not make it to
| the shed again, when the sun does not come back.
|
| I would rather have the solar panels somewhere else, or those
| on top of the rover just as a bonus and use batteries and
| focus on it to do useful things first.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's a good question and I incorporated my answer in to a top
| level comment here. Short answer: it's a new type of vehicle so
| existing tools aren't exactly right. We're going to release the
| first vehicle to early adopters with no tools and then work
| with the community to design appropriate tools for it. This is
| important because every farm is different and so many people
| will have good ideas. We don't want to gatekeep the design
| while we work on tools.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34167102
|
| I will say that while it doesn't do farming yet, that is the
| point of the system. And currently it autonomously controls 8
| motors to follow precision GPS paths based on data from a
| central server and database system with a web page for control.
| It's definitely a robot with some degree of precision!
| amelius wrote:
| > Claiming it's a "precision robot" before claiming it does
| anything is...a choice.
|
| Some other guy claimed his robot was "full self driving" and
| was quite successful with that choice ...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-28 23:00 UTC)