Robotic Blogs

Robots not only take on unpleasant tasks but they can enhance and improve on human efforts.

Another farmer's helper robot: The Voyager robot fence from Lely.

The robot fence is an electrified fence that keeps your cows from running away, like any good fence. But this smart fence also occasionaly moves a few feet to give the cows fresh grass to graze. When they get to the end of the field, the robot fence can move the herd back to the beginning again to start all over. It gives the cows fresh ground and allows the field to recover.



According to the website:
"Frontal grazing by means of the Voyager is a method of intensive grazing management that allows livestock to continuously graze on fresh forage. Because the cows have a small strip of fresh pasture each time, the grass is well cropped and dosed, which not only makes the rumen function better, but also achieves a better proportional intake of protein and sugars."

Happy cows, better milk.

The fence consists of two 4-wheel skid-steer robots that keep the electrified line properly tensioned between them. Each robot is about 125 cm (4 feet) square, 215 cm (7 feet) tall and weighs 170 kg (375 lbs. They communicate through bluetooth so they can compensate for obstacles or unlevel ground.

The robots are powered by solar panels so they can operate autonomously. They are pre-programmed to optimize the forage. The farmer only needs to tell the robots how many square meters of new field per day and the robots calculate how far forward to move.

Voyager

In the future, farmers will look back on old farming techniques and marvel at the wastefullness of dumping tons of chemicals all over the ground. Why didn't they just put the treatments where they are needed?
We have already seen this idea applied to kill bugs. Now it is also used for killing weeds.

Here is an example of a way that robots can be used to target weed killing herbicide on the farm. This robot is solar operated for long days in the field. It uses stereo vision to search out weeds among the crops. When it finds a weed, it reaches out with a special cutter arm and chops it off. Next it sprays the remaining stem with a squirt of herbicide. So there! Nasty weed!


A team of engineers led by Dr. Lei Tian at the University of Illinois came up with the idea of the solar driven robot from other research they were doing. While working on remote sensing of crops they have to walk the rows taking measurements to compare actual readings to remote data.
One day, one of the poor overworked grad students fainted from the heat. Maybe there was a better way than grad student slavery?
Their first robot was okay but the batteries ran out every couple of hours. So the solar panels were added to supply continous power. And the panel shades the cameras for better visual identification.

The robot rolls through he fields at about 3 miles per hour (4.8 kmph) and uses GPS, ultrasonic and vision for navigation. The next version will take soil measurements and check the crops. Like the farmer Scout robot.

U of I Robots Go Solar; New System Could Drastically Reduce Herbicide Use

The founders of Vision Robotics Corporation have applied for a US patent on an agricultural robot that uses a vision and mapping to guide harvester robots through the farm.

The patent proposes that a scout robot is first sent through the farm or orchard to map out the fruit, weeds, plants that need trimming or other farm work that needs to be done. Once the farm is mapped - for example all of the ripe fruit located - then a plan is formulated. Once the plan is done then the robot goes about its harvesting or maybe a team of harvester robots are sent out to pluck the ripe fruit.

Their innovation is the use of a scout robot to visually record and map the details of the orchard before work begins.
Having an accessible view of the plants will save time walking the farm and will also help optimize the use of the harvesting machines.
Other organizations are investigating using autonomous flying robots to get a good look over their farm.

US Patent application 20060213167