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Oh hey, this is my project! Great to see it show up here. This post is a bit old. I’m currently working on two big video updates (and associated blog posts), bu

Oh hey, this is my project! Great to see it show up here. This post is a bit old. I’m currently working on two big video updates (and associated blog posts), but there is a newer update from March of this year here: https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simulation-brakes-funding-and-navigation-improvements/202 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/march-2022-update-simu... A common question is “okay but what does it do?” The answer is that right now it doesn’t do any farming. To do farming we need to develop tools. Tools are highly specific to the farming process used, and our machine is unlike a tractor or a human hand as it has less power than a tractor, more power than a human, and doesn’t get bored or require any marginal input costs like human labor does. This means existing tools aren’t exactly right and it’s going to take a bit of work to get that sorted. Because tools are such a complex part of the system, our plan is to finalize and release our autonomous rover without any tools to early adopters, and then work with the community to experiment and design tools together. Remember that this is an open source research project and we encourage and will assist anyone in going in to production on their own machines, so early adopters designing tools will ensure they have a complete system they can manufacture that works for their farming context. The end goal is a system which can help in every step of the farming process in a regenerative organic farming system. This includes clearing the rows of any cover crop, planting seeds and starts, thinning seedlings and pulling weeds, dealing with pests, harvesting, and resetting for a new rotation. It’s a lot of work as I’m doing most of the design, engineering, and fabrication work myself as well as all video production and blog work, but as I’ve mentioned I’m finalizing two new videos and one of the new videos is a new easier to produce format. I got a little too in to fancy video production with four locations and multiple angles on one of the videos and realized I need to dial it back and produce simpler more frequent videos. You’re welcome to follow me on mastodon where I post photos of some of the latest work, as well as personal stuff. Here’s a picture of the brand new vehicle we have developed that is our production intent system, as well as new electronics which have just finished production and are in transit to us now. Thanks so much for taking a look! https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109570577090460530 https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109570577090460530 https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109488692996964147 https://queer.party/@tlalexander/109488692996964147

j_walter 4y ago
Keep it up. I'm hoping this project is something a novice grower could use to farm a few acres more easily. Would love to see more people turn extra acreage into sustainable farming.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Thank you! That’s my hope as well.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"I got a little too in to fancy video production with four locations and multiple angles on one of the videos and realized I need to dial it back and produce simpler more frequent videos." Well yes, the main thing I am expecting when I see a video about a robot/rover - is simply to see it in action. In the 9 minutes video it is shown to be moving only some seconds, which I totally missed upon skimming through it, which left me disappointed. So if it really can do GPS pathing, I want to see that, so why not show it? Probably best in a speedrun, where it goes up and down the field. All the technical details are interesting, but probably are better shown after it is shown what it can do. Basically all the robot movies are following that pattern and it makes kind of sense. Because you likely want to attract people who want to use it and not mainly people who want to tinker with it for the sake of tinkering. "Tools are highly specific to the farming process used" Seeding and weeding (in early stage) are quite general problems (mostly) independent from the plant and especially autonomous weeding (to not have to use pesticides) could be really useful. You are probably aware of https://farm.bot https://farm.bot? They are doing it stationary, but maybe the same tools with modifications could be applied to your rovers?
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Ah so what’s happening here is that our first video was entirely drone shots of the robot operating autonomously, and this video was our second video with a focus on the technical system design. Overall we’ve released three videos and two show it in autonomous operation. Just not this one! The new video that has more complex production is an 18 minute narrative video sharing the full details of our intent as well as a story which has been important for me to share for a long time. To keep it engaging I decided to shoot in a few different locations at the farm and change camera angles, but I learned that it’s just too much to attempt to do that. So future videos will be me standing in one spot reading an update while I play b-roll of whatever we’re discussing on screen. Weeding tools are going to be more complex and rely on computer vision, which requires building a data set and a lot of complex mechanics, so we want to release the system to early adopters before that. Plenty of people are interested in this, and anyone who wants to wait till we have tools is welcome to do so. It’s just going to take a while because we’re not venture funded, we’re a little open source research project. Here’s a video of autonomous operation. Also in my first link in the comment you’re replying to there’s a video showing complex multi-path following capability. Cheers! https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E

j_walter 4y ago

Keep it up. I'm hoping this project is something a novice grower could use to farm a few acres more easily. Would love to see more people turn extra acreage into sustainable farming.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Thank you! That’s my hope as well.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"I got a little too in to fancy video production with four locations and multiple angles on one of the videos and realized I need to dial it back and produce simpler more frequent videos." Well yes, the main thing I am expecting when I see a video about a robot/rover - is simply to see it in action. In the 9 minutes video it is shown to be moving only some seconds, which I totally missed upon skimming through it, which left me disappointed. So if it really can do GPS pathing, I want to see that, so why not show it? Probably best in a speedrun, where it goes up and down the field. All the technical details are interesting, but probably are better shown after it is shown what it can do. Basically all the robot movies are following that pattern and it makes kind of sense. Because you likely want to attract people who want to use it and not mainly people who want to tinker with it for the sake of tinkering. "Tools are highly specific to the farming process used" Seeding and weeding (in early stage) are quite general problems (mostly) independent from the plant and especially autonomous weeding (to not have to use pesticides) could be really useful. You are probably aware of https://farm.bot https://farm.bot? They are doing it stationary, but maybe the same tools with modifications could be applied to your rovers?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Ah so what’s happening here is that our first video was entirely drone shots of the robot operating autonomously, and this video was our second video with a focus on the technical system design. Overall we’ve released three videos and two show it in autonomous operation. Just not this one! The new video that has more complex production is an 18 minute narrative video sharing the full details of our intent as well as a story which has been important for me to share for a long time. To keep it engaging I decided to shoot in a few different locations at the farm and change camera angles, but I learned that it’s just too much to attempt to do that. So future videos will be me standing in one spot reading an update while I play b-roll of whatever we’re discussing on screen. Weeding tools are going to be more complex and rely on computer vision, which requires building a data set and a lot of complex mechanics, so we want to release the system to early adopters before that. Plenty of people are interested in this, and anyone who wants to wait till we have tools is welcome to do so. It’s just going to take a while because we’re not venture funded, we’re a little open source research project. Here’s a video of autonomous operation. Also in my first link in the comment you’re replying to there’s a video showing complex multi-path following capability. Cheers! https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E https://youtu.be/NsyEIgKVM5E