The garden robot is a project i started 1 1/2 years ago. I got the idea after the FarmBot Was launched on kick starter.
I like the idea that a robot could plant and weed a small garden. The Issue is the platform that is used limits the robot from being practical to the people that would be most interested in the technology Small Urban Farmers. I was in the works of building a robot for weeding my garden which is 10x the size of the FarmBot. I had designed and 3d printed a 3 inch rotor tiller. I also build and ran a lego ev3 tank tread bot up and down two rows in the garden to see the effects on weed germination. Interesting thing was that the tank bot with a rake attached to the back was useful at reducing the weeds in the garden by around 80% in the area that it was ran for one day. The idea is to build a robot that can at the right time run a pattern in the garden and also plant and harvest greens.
Size becomes an issue with this type of system. There are other products recently like the tilly bot. A small Turtle bot that roams the garden using simple sensing tech to adjusted its course. This is a very inefficient way of navigating. Simple though.
The drive base I have designed was to house the FarmBot frame on the platform. it would then navigate to the next plot after the CNC program ran for the activity that it was running at this time. (Watering, Weeding, or Planting)
My conclusions on this base is that this platform will not work in the applications I want the robot to work in.
- Stepper motors are slow at least at the cost effective range that the Frambot is running.
- The Drive base is to high off the ground with the legs of the bot will have much flex to hold the position of the robot.
- After researching Urban Farms the base will be to large for the needs of farmers. AKA me.
I have decided to look at this problem for a different stand point. I plan to be focused more on the harvesting and planting aspects to the robot.
My plan is to use LMR as a place to document my build. I am writing this to see how this documentation will work and if i am able to update this build log as I go with this project.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/garden-robot