[HN Gopher] Show HN: Sowbot - open-hardware agricultural robot (...
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Show HN: Sowbot - open-hardware agricultural robot (ROS2, RTK GPS)
Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot designed to close the
"prototype gap" that kills most agri-robotics startups and research
projects -- the 18+ months spent on drivers, networking, safety
watchdogs, and UI before you can even start on the thing you
actually care about. The hardware is built around a stackable
10x10cm compute module with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs -- one for ROS
2 navigation/EKF localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO
inference -- connected via a single ethernet cable. Centimetre-
level positioning via dual RTK GNSS, CAN bus for field comms, and
real-time motor control via ESP32 running Lizard firmware.
Everything -- schematics, PCB layouts, firmware -- is under open
licences. The software stack runs on RoSys/Field Friend (for teams
who want fast iteration) or DevKit ROS (for teams already in the
ROS ecosystem). The idea is that a lab in one country can reproduce
another lab's experiment by sharing a Docker image. Current
status: the Open Core brain is largely fabricated, the full-size
Sowbot body has a detailed BOM but isn't yet assembled, and we have
two smaller dev platforms (Mini and Pico) in various stages of
testing. We're a small volunteer team and we're looking for
contributors -- hardware, ROS, firmware, docs, whatever you can
offer. The best place to start is our Discord:
https://discord.gg/SvztEBr4KZ -- we have a weekly call if you'd
prefer to just show up and chat. GitHub:
https://github.com/Agroecology-Lab/feldfreund_devkit_ros/tre...
Author : Sabrees
Score : 95 points
Date : 2026-02-23 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sowbot.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (sowbot.co.uk)
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Great name, if nothing else!
| Sabrees wrote:
| Thanks, bit conflicted about it TBH, it's primarily/initially a
| weeding robot, although I do dream of expanding it to do
| harvesting, and yes potentially sowing too down the line.
|
| Strapping something like the Jang P6 to it is probably feasible
| https://reagtools.co.uk/collections/jang
|
| For the harvester it would be a bolt on for
| https://reagtools.co.uk/products/quick-cut-greens-harvester or
| maybe https://reagtools.co.uk/products/babyleaf-harvester-80cm
| (I grow green salads)
| tda wrote:
| And for weeding?
| Sabrees wrote:
| Initially keep it simple; Mechanical for between row
| weeding. I'll probably start strapping a couple of these to
| some linear actuators:
| https://www.getearthquake.com/products/fusion-drill-
| powered-... (they work surprisingly well)
|
| Beyond that for in-row weeding a engraving laser on a
| Delta: https://github.com/Agroecology-Lab/Open-Weeding-
| Delta/tree/m...
|
| Or if I'm feeling rich by then this third party weeder
| looks pretty good https://github.com/Laudando-Associates-
| LLC/LASER
| tda wrote:
| I sometimes help out at a hobby vineyard of 0.7 hectare;
| weeding in the row is a lot of manual labour. Your
| platform seems like a good fit. I like tinkering and
| robotics, what kind of price point are you aiming for?
| Sabrees wrote:
| As cheap as possible, and no cheaper than that.
|
| In my head it's PS3-PS5k, so by the time it's useful
| probably a bit more than that.
| falkenstein wrote:
| a simple ride on mower with a diy inter row disc
| (basically just a belt and pulley with a spring) may be
| enough. probably just get sonebody with a tractor and
| inter row disc weeder to do the job for you.
| TGower wrote:
| What's the plan for using an engraving laser in open air
| without blinding a neighbor? Does the bot fully roll over
| the target area before firing or something?
| Sabrees wrote:
| TBC, just trying to get the platform and mechanical
| weeding working for now
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| A joke that's whooshing over my head?
| Sabrees wrote:
| A robot that Sows seeds..
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Aaaaaargh.
|
| (+deg#deg)+( +-+
|
| Thank you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| From a video somewhere in the page: "The aim is to make food
| production more sustainable and efficient" yet requires a web
| app. I'd hope that you can run the server side on a local machine
| and not require cloud connectivity.
| Sabrees wrote:
| The web app runs locally from the robot. No cloud. Once we
| reach autonomy (still some way away) you shouldn't have to use
| that much either.
| Sabrees wrote:
| Quite interested in running robot<>robot and robot<>Farm
| comms over https://reticulum.network/ but that's a side
| project off a side project..
| abraae wrote:
| This is the future, good luck to you
| dheera wrote:
| I highly encourage you to go visit farms sooner rather than
| later, especially during the rainy seasons and winter when
| farmers are really at work preparing for the next season. The
| kind of conditions robots need to deal with in that environment
| is no joke.
|
| I also notice you're using the BNO055 -- if you need an C++ I2C
| ROS driver for it I wrote one (https://github.com/dheera/ros-imu-
| bno055). I think the one in the ROS apt-get repository is written
| in Python but they claimed the package name before I did
| Sabrees wrote:
| Good advice on farms. I do live on a farm, so somewhat familiar
| with mud! Many of the worst problems are caused by moving 20ton
| tractors around IMHO, one of the problems small scale ag
| robotics may help with.
|
| Will check out your Bno055 currently using the upstream one in
| Lizard
|
| https://github.com/zauberzeug/lizard/blob/main/main/modules/...
| https://github.com/zauberzeug/lizard/blob/main/main/modules/...
|
| Any review of that welcome too of course.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What's your payload? Where are the seeds? How are they deposited?
|
| Recommend going to a farm right now to see how this works in
| production. For the most part, you can autonomously sow using
| GPS. But the farmer just rides along.
| Sabrees wrote:
| Payload is whatever you (or your startup) want it to be.
|
| For me personally mechanical between row weeding is step one,
| then laser in-row weeding.
|
| 1. These on some linear actuators:
| https://www.getearthquake.com/products/fusion-drill-powered-...
| (they work surprisingly well)
|
| 2. Beyond that for in-row weeding a engraving laser on a Delta:
| https://github.com/Agroecology-Lab/Open-Weeding-Delta/tree/m...
|
| Or if I'm feeling rich by then this third party weeder looks
| pretty good https://github.com/Laudando-Associates-LLC/LASER
|
| 3. For Seeding my salad crop
| https://reagtools.co.uk/collections/jang
|
| 4. Harvesting my salad crop
| https://reagtools.co.uk/products/quick-cut-greens-harvester
|
| I live on a farm, I have sold salad commercially, these are
| largely tools I already use and own, just moved about by motors
| rather than muscles.
|
| This is a smaller scale thing than arable. We're talking a step
| up from manual horticulture (which is actually what still feeds
| much of the world)
| sgillen wrote:
| Very cool! shameless self promotion but check out greenwave-
| monitor[1] for the 'Diagnostics TUI'. I'll get it into the
| buildfarm soon.
|
| [1] https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/greenwave_monitor
| Sabrees wrote:
| Nice, thanks! looks like a good one..
| cpgxiii wrote:
| > The hardware is built around a stackable 10x10cm compute module
| with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs -- one for ROS 2 navigation/EKF
| localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO inference -- connected
| via a single ethernet cable.
|
| I will preface this by saying that I have nothing against ARM per
| se, that my employer/team supported a good chunk of the work for
| making ROS 2 actually work on arm64, and that there is some good
| hardware out there.
|
| I really don't understand why startups and research projects keep
| using weird ARM SBCs for their robots. The best of these SBCs is
| still _vastly_ shittier in terms of software support and
| stability than any random Chinese Intel ADL-N box. The only
| reasons to use (weird) ARM SBCs in robots are that either (1) you
| are using a Jetson for Jetson things (i.e. Nvidia libraries), or
| (2) you have a product which requires serious cost optimization
| to be produced at a large scale. Otherwise you are just
| committing yourselves and your users /customers to a future of
| terrible-to-nonexistent support and adding significantly to the
| amount of work you need to bring up the new system and port
| existing tools to it.
| Sabrees wrote:
| If you can send me an open hardware Intel, or Jetson I'd
| happily use it.
|
| Part of the point of this for me is to see what's possible with
| open hardware (down to chip level at least)
| Neywiny wrote:
| Framework? Maybe?
| Sabrees wrote:
| Framweork have done the best they can within the confines
| of Intel licensing, still a long way from being able to
| fabricate it though
|
| https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-
| Laptop-13/tre...
|
| In a few years we'll all be using more open RISCV stuff of
| course.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| There are a variety of x86 products with Coreboot support, if
| what you are looking for is firmware openness. If what you
| are looking for is PCB design openness, the options are much
| fewer, but at that point you are probably optimizing for an
| overly niche objective.
|
| > Part of the point of this for me is to see what's possible
| with open hardware (down to chip level at least)
|
| I appreciate the idea, but this is essentially saying "this
| project will prioritize a specific choice of one (core) piece
| of hardware to the detriment of everything else, users
| included". Approximately none of your potential users are
| going to benefit from the "openness" of the SBC versus that
| of a more broadly-supported platform (I say "openness"
| because the reality of SBCs is that actually finding a
| usefully performant one that is completely blob-free is
| almost impossible). Open hardware means very little if it
| isn't running an upstream kernel and userland.
| Sabrees wrote:
| The software does explicitly support Jetson for example,
| and I'm sure the stack would run on Intel if you want it
| to.
|
| The Mainline kernel for this particular board is _almost_
| there 6.20 or so I expect. Armbian support is good.
| schaefer wrote:
| > The only reasons to use ARM SBCs in robots are...
|
| Obviously, anyone can have there own opinion on this. I work in
| robotics, we are quite happy with our A53 and M4. Though, we
| use a SOM, not a SBC, if you feel like splitting hairs.
| cpgxiii wrote:
| You probably aren't using some weird SOM, though. There is a
| bit of an unstated exception of "unless said SBC/SOM has
| specific hardware that is necessary/particularly valuable for
| your product/project". For example, if you need GMSL you are
| probably not going to be picking Intel, even though ADL-N and
| the bigger processors support MIPI, simply because no one
| else does and the documentation/support for it is basically
| nonexistent. Designs with closely-coupled A/M/R cores, or
| CPU/MCU/FPGA hybrids like Zynq would be others.
|
| But generally projects which are choosing some random SBC
| aren't using any of these features, and are just suffering
| the pain/imposing it on their users for no good reason.
| agentifysh wrote:
| outside of sowing would you consider some open source drones like
| the new DJI with agriculture payload attached to it.
|
| or some automated green house with open source designs.
|
| love the name sowbot.
| Sabrees wrote:
| I did recently automate a greenhouse (heating, Hydroponics,
| fans, lights) it was just R&D rather than commercial so just
| used home assistant for it.
|
| I did sketch out a slightly more 'professionalised' version,
| but haven't built it yet https://github.com/samuk/IoT-
| Greenhouse-Temperature-and-Irri...
|
| I'd be pleasantly surprised if DJI had done anything open
| source, Ardupilot is pretty capable of course. I really want to
| automate the time consuming labour parts of horticulture, for
| me that's mostly weeding and to a lesser extent harvesting.
| lorenzohess wrote:
| Looks great for a prototype. Has any modeling, simulation, or
| analysis been done of its off-road performance, i.e. mobility,
| GO/NOGO, motive efficiency, maneuverability on deformable
| terrain? This is critical for agricultural applications.
|
| Has any stress analysis been done on the frame? Looks to me like
| it could use a couple more triangles to reinforce those
| rectangles.
|
| Have you designed a skid-steering controller for it? Off-road
| skid steering can be quite variable obviously depending on
| terrain properties.
| Sabrees wrote:
| Rosys (a middleware layer https://github.com/zauberzeug/rosys)
| has rosys.driving.Odometer and rosys.driving.Steerer it's
| essentially a differential drive kinematic model.
|
| Hoping RTK dual-F9P moving-base setup (M4 in the roadmap)
| largely sidesteps the worst of this -- NAV-RELPOSNED gives us a
| real heading vector independent of wheel odometry, and the
| robot_localisation EKF can weight RTK heavily and odometry
| lightly when GNSS quality is good.
| Sabrees wrote:
| The current simulation is underdeveloped but can be found here
| https://github.com/samuk/caatingarobotics/tree/jazzy/src/agr...
|
| The frame will almost certainly need more triangles
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(page generated 2026-02-23 23:00 UTC)