The robot is known as Acorn and is the project of [taylor] who farms in California. The platform is powered by an 800 watt solar array feeding a set of supercapacitors for energy storage. It uses mountain bike wheels and tires fitted with electric hub motors which give it four wheel drive and four wheel steering to make it capable even in muddy fields. The farming tools, as well as any computer vision and automation hardware, can be housed under the solar panels. This prototype uses an Nvidia Jetson module to handle the heavy lifting of machine learning and automation, with a Raspberry Pi to handle the basic operation of the robot, and can navigate itself around a farm using highly precise GPS units.
Right now it’s a prototype as no working tools were demonstrated. It seems the vehicular control and sensors are first being finalised, but it’s an open source project, so the invitation is also out there for others to contribute and get involved.
See url=https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/automate-the-farm-with-acorn/]Automate The Farm With Acorn[/url]
#technology #farming #opensource #raspberrypi #environment #
Farming has been undergoing quite a revolution in the past few years. Since World War 2, most industrial farming has relied on synthetic fertilizer, large machinery, and huge farms with single crop…