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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 ou
by malfist 4y ago
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 4y agoIt'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 4y agoYeah, 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. edit: ok it is driving in the video at 8:25 for a few seconds
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoOur first video was entirely shots of the robot driving autonomously. https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E The solar is an experiment to see if we can build a system that reduces waste. Farms already rely on sun to operate and we want to see if we can build a farming system that does the same. This reduces waste as our super caps last a million charge cycles while lithium batteries only last a few thousand.
- amelius 4y ago> 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 ...
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoIt’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 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!
- kuhewa 4y agoCan it handle a surprise attack from an 8 month old farm dog
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoHah might need tougher tires. In my experience with my other rover robot dogs get real curious and run up close and bark but they usually don’t want to actually touch it because they’re too unsure of it.
- kuhewa 4y agoGood you went with wheels instead of some kinda Boston dynamics deal, anything that looks like it has an Achilles seems to draw most of the attention of Kelpies and collies and other herding breeds. I knew one orchard roaming kelpie that would stare at the apple ladder foot for as long as it took until it moved so that it could bite the aluminium to herd it along.
- amelius 4y agoOk, so it is a platform for developing agricultural solutions.