
Small robots may kill the tractor and make farming efficient - jelliclesfarm
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/farming-robots-small-robot-company-tractors
======
TaylorAlexander
If anyone is interested, I’ve designed a totally open source 3D printable off
road robot that is meant as a software development platform for farming
robotics. I’m currently working on improving the longevity of the gearboxes
and on a camera based vision system using reinforcement learning.

Some videos:

[https://youtu.be/LIkX7wniYh0](https://youtu.be/LIkX7wniYh0)
[https://youtu.be/cU_0M1_TvD0](https://youtu.be/cU_0M1_TvD0)
[https://youtu.be/DXPmqCd0r04](https://youtu.be/DXPmqCd0r04)

The whole robot and software is licensed CC0 and BSD respectively. Onshape and
github links are on the site I promote in the videos.

Would any of you want to build something like this? What would you use it for?
Anything you would want that this one is missing?

~~~
ph0rque
That looks awesome! Here's a comment I wrote earlier about the topic:

I've been thinking about a suite of robots on the residential level that could
not only mow the grass and edge it, but also shovel snow, and perhaps
eventually prune plants and pick the harvest. If a base, plus a suite of
attachments, could be affordable at less than $5k retail, I would buy it.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Awesome! That price might be hard to achieve any time soon. Mostly because the
engineering team will be very expensive, so the price will have to be many
multiples of the unit cost for some time. Such a thing might be possible at a
$20k price in five to ten years, and a service company could offer that work
on contract to many different households.

As robotics matures as a field, the engineering costs to accomplish this will
go down, as will per unit costs. Maybe in 20 years time such a multi bot could
be available. It’s hard to predict the future and probably of questionable
merit. That said I’ve become much more pessimistic about timelines for
robotics as I’ve continued to work in the industry.

My hope though is that open source robotics can keep pace with the industry as
time goes on, just as open source operating systems have kept pace with their
closed source counterparts. That way people will have options when the
technology does become feasible.

~~~
ph0rque
Also, after some thinking... what's the current price of just the parts?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
About $1500 including batteries. $400 of that is motor controllers, which
could be reduced to $130 using Odrive instead of VESC for motor controllers.
This is for the remote control version. If you want it self driving, consider
the cost of a beefy mobile computer and sensors. I am currently working on a
reinforcement learning system that will use cameras and the $1300 NVIDIA
Jetson Xavier computer for autonomy.

~~~
ph0rque
What about something like this, but without the person controls?
[https://bealoving.com/products/electric-
scooter](https://bealoving.com/products/electric-scooter)

~~~
ph0rque
Or this? [https://innovgoods.com/products/snow-plow-
robot](https://innovgoods.com/products/snow-plow-robot)

~~~
ph0rque
Ah, this seems to be a scam, according to the actual manufacturer:
[https://www.atr-orbiter.net/](https://www.atr-orbiter.net/)

------
dicroce
Many crops would not need so many pesticides if they were grown in close
proximity to the other plants they naturally occur with... in some cases this
is because other plants attract predator insects that keep other insects at
bay... humans could never farm this way because harvesters just chop
everything down at once...

But a robot capable of recognizing all the plants could tell... and could
selectively harvest just what is needed.

I suspect this is a very difficult problem however just because of how varied
individual plants can be... telling plants apart can be hard even for trained
humans.

~~~
p1esk
_I suspect this is a very difficult problem however just because of how varied
individual plants can be... telling plants apart can be hard even for trained
humans._

Actually, it's not. Despite all the hype surrounding deep learning, tasks like
telling similar looking plants apart is precisely what's it's good at. In
fact, it will probably be better than most humans at this task. Moreover, it's
simple to implement. You take off the shelf model (e.g. ResNet-50) trained on
ImageNet, and finetune it on a dataset of specific plants you want it to
recognize (~1000 examples of each plant). Then you can run that model on an
iPhone (or even on much cheaper hardware)

A much harder problem is to make the robot move through the terrain without
getting stuck. But even there, looking at what Boston Dynamics is doing, it
seems like we are not that far off.

~~~
kaveh_h
Robots with legs are probably not an option, they are both costly in
production and energy usage. Something more akin to
[https://farm.bot](https://farm.bot) but on a larger scale would probably work
better. Maybe a hybrid solution like a CNC bot built on top a frame with
wheels that could simply drive around a field and work on different quadrants
would be a way forward.

~~~
Iv
I am currently making a suspended robot to work on that exact problem. I hope
to achieve what Farm Bot does but on a much higher scale. I live in Japan
where most of the fields are ricefields. Wheels or legs are not really an
option under these extremely muddy conditions.

~~~
tomcam
Would love to hear more about this

~~~
Iv
I wish this post happened a week later! We are currently making a website, it
should have been online last week but we missed the deadline. I have a small
working prototype (2x2m area), I am currently changing some parts so that it
can be made 100% with off-the-shelf parts. Next step is trying it on a 10x10m
area and then see how far it can go.

Without making it particularly sturdy, it was able to lift 4 kg and has a
pretty good movement repeatability even if totally "blind" (I am currently
working on its vision system), two things that drone would have a hard time
duplicating in outdoor conditions.

I can PM you later when we have all the things set up if you want. Or we can
just chat here.

~~~
carapace
I'm building something similar but for litter collection.

In order to make the system mobile I'm making a sort of tiny tractor that
relocates the bases of the support struts (I use a tripod.) You can have
separate symbiotic fleets of static "heads" (tripod+wirebot) that are moved by
mobile "rovers".

This lets you optimize the system a little better, since most of the time the
head units will be working and largely stationary, so a small fleet of rovers
could be enough to handle a large fleet of processors.

For ricefields I think you might sink stepping stones in a triangle "grid",
maybe concrete cones about a meter long and 10cm at the base, inverted and
stuck in the mud. The distance between them would be fixed by the span of the
suspended robot.

You would also want "vascular" conduits to transport material to and from the
working heads. These aren't necessarily physical tubes or conveyor belts, they
could be made of simple cargo drones like streams of ants.

You could make bridge or rail units that fit between the stepping stones for
temporary reconfigurable transport networks. (If your cargo drones are sure-
footed and reliable these could be simple planks.)

Also, have you heard of Hangprinter?
[https://vitana.se/opr3d/tbear/](https://vitana.se/opr3d/tbear/) (I have no
affiliation w/ it.) It's a "RepRap hanging from the ceiling"

~~~
Iv
Interesting! Actually my dream would be to make a system deployable by a fleet
of drones. Rovers are actually complex to move, especially in an uncontrolled
environment with lots of plants.

I don't think any rice farmer would like to put concrete blocks in their
fields unless every task is reliably automated: they depend on machines to
prepare, plant and harvest the rice and a stone in the middle of a ricefield
would make these steps harder.

I know that there are several projects using wirebots for 3d printing. It
usually allows for a bigger printing volume than regular CNC-like designs, and
I think they must be able to have a high precision too. I am wondering what is
the limitation there.

------
nickparker
The company is fairly interesting, if seemingly early, but this article is
atrocious. It repeats itself all over, it’s riddled with broken grammar, weird
sentence structure, and a few typos, and the “name all our products like
people” thing only adds to the confusion.

~~~
filoeleven
Came here to say this. A less confusing overview of the robots can be found at
the company’s site.

[https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/meet-the-
robots/](https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/meet-the-robots/)

~~~
hmottestad
Those all seem like renders to me.

From their crunchbase profile it says they've got 1.2 million pounds in
funding, but need double that ++ to get started:

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-small-robot-
comp...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-small-robot-
company#section-recent-news-activity)

~~~
all2
Those are definitely all renders. I've worked on my share of prototype
robotics. To get to the degree of polish they present, you'd need a heavy
industrial behind you (see Fanuc or Mitsubishi or similar).

------
4043D
Farming as a service won't work for smaller landholders (less than 1000
hectares) people on smaller farms have money to spend 2 or 3 times a year that
is when they make investments that they can write off on tax (buying a
tractor) all these agtech startups pushing farming as a service fundimentaly
don't understand farming as a business.

~~~
GreeniFi
Small scale farming often doesn’t work as a business. The economics of modern
day commercial agriculture support only the big farmer. These technologies,
unless they get super cheap, will drive more and more farm consolidation.

~~~
4043D
Small scale farming absolutely does work as a business and the vast majority
of farms (world wide) are in the sub 1000 hectare range. If you are talking
sub 100 acre hobby farms then yeah they aren't a profitable main source of
income (excluding some market garden operations)

~~~
mymythisisthis
What about fish farming and aquaculture. People pay a premium for sustainable
fish, a good pound of sustainable fish can set me back $20-$30. Maybe there is
enough of a profit margin in such fields, and they don't have to be big.

------
acd
Background grew up on the country side.

I think robotic farming with less pesticide spray will be the future! There
seem to be an ever increasing size increase of tractors. Many of these
tractors runs proprietary software John Deere which makes them hard to self
service. Robots can run from solar/bio energy generated locally at the farm.

I think there will be a movement of build your own open source robots at
farms. Farmers are very inventive and good at making things!

~~~
randomdata
_> I think there will be a movement of build your own open source robots at
farms._

As a farmer, as much as the techie in me would love nothing more, I struggle
to see it. There is a pretty large chasm between hobbyist-level tools and
industrial-level tools, and it is a stretch to, quite literally, bet the farm
on the former. Proven tools with timely service and support are essential to
getting the work done in time.

Robotics is already big in agriculture and has been for decades. As someone
once said "technology is developed by military, adopted by agriculture, and
then the rest of the world is finally exposed to it." If you can dream of a
way to robotize agriculture, it is quite likely already commercially
available. Any farmers who do happen to come up with a novel idea to improve
agriculture will be undoubtedly looking at commercialization to raise the
necessary capital to develop such a machine.

There is unquestionably a long history of farmers bringing innovations to the
industry, and undoubtedly will continue to be, but they are not exactly
projects that you slap together in your free time from open source materials.
Those who have something to build put forth serious investment, and often
requiring outside investment, to make them a reality.

That said, I could definitely see popularity among gardeners, where the scale
is tiny and the practice is already a hobby.

~~~
Antonio123123
I think a new startup will "innovate" how farming is done using robots. After
that the technology will become mainstream.

~~~
randomdata
I think you're 20-30 years late, to be honest. Robots have already taken over
farming and their use has been mainstream for decades. There are still some
niche areas which have room for improvement on the robotic front, but
innovation in those areas will remain niche products.

What will be transformative is changes to the legal framework that will
relieve human operators from overseeing the robots that do exist, without fear
of legal repercussions should things go wrong (and they will; farm equipment
breaks _constantly_ given the harsh environment it has to operate in).

~~~
Antonio123123
I was thinking about swarms of small robots that use machine learning to do
intelligent work and come with innovative solutions, like the ones in the
article:

Use of lasers to kill unwanted plants instead of herbicides,

Planting symbiotic plants near each other,

Providing a interface "like farmville" but the actions are executed by robots,
on a real farm

~~~
randomdata
Assuming that we can overcome the legal issues to allow a swarm of robots take
over the farm, you have left me curious to know what the value proposition of
a swarm of robots is over one large robot?

Given the large cost of repairs, can a swarm of robots compete on cost? If my
one big robot breaks down, I fix it once and it's good to go. When my swarm of
robots start to break down, I have to fix the same thing _n_ number of times.

How about transport? Lots of farmers around here have farms which are 50+
miles apart. Right now they can hop into their one robot and drive it to the
next farm. Does the swarm need to be loaded onto a trailer and trucked to the
next farm? Autonomous on-road operation on country roads definitely isn't
coming any time soon.

Don't get me wrong, the idea is neat. But it has to actually be better than
the alternatives to see adoption.

~~~
Antonio123123
> what the value proposition of a swarm of robots is over one large robot?

Doing complex detailed work which could innovate the way farming is done ex:
1)not using chemicals, by killing weeds/bugs using robot/symbiotic approach
2)plant plants together (symbiotic plants, complementary vegetables: roots and
plants) 3)using the land to plant more crops more densely

> Given the large cost of repairs, can a swarm of robots compete on cost? If
> my one big robot breaks down, I fix it once and it's good to go. When my
> swarm of robots start to break down, I have to fix the same thing n number
> of times.

I think cost will be an issue this swarms being much more expensive. However
they won't break all at once ant you would always have a working fleet. Also
the quality would be better, because the same unit would be used everywhere
small scale and large scale.

>How about transport? Lots of farmers around here have farms which are 50+
miles apart. Right now they can hop into their one robot and drive it to the
next farm. Does the swarm need to be loaded onto a trailer and trucked to the
next farm? Autonomous on-road operation on country roads definitely isn't
coming any time soon.

I think that this "startup" will have the logistics sorted by having a large
area of land in one piece

>Don't get me wrong, the idea is neat. But it has to actually be better than
the alternatives to see adoption.

Definitely. And that would require a very advanced robot. And maybe we already
have the technology. But it would need enormous resources poured into it to
make such an advanced product that offers all the benefits. And I don't know
if the benefits are real/worth it.

------
cprayingmantis
I’ve been thinking about robots on the farm for a long time myself. I’ve
always approached the idea from the view point of cheaply modernizing tractors
first so that more farmers would benefit. My idea would be to take a platform
that farmers already love: the desiel tractor and start adding more
automation. There’s so much already invested in the three point hitch,
hydraulics, pto, and other systems that it just makes sense to build on it.
There’s several tasks that are perfect to build automation on. A big one where
I’m from is hay harvesting it’s a four step process that could take days.
Having the ability to get these task done async without involving help would
be a boon to farmers.

I see modernizing tractors as a 4 step process.

1: add automation to existing tractors. Mountable kit that would cost less
than $10k

2: replace said tractor with electric variant that has the same platform.
Target price $30k

3: provide a way to charge based on solar power (most automation worthy farm
task need to be done on a sunny day anyways) Target price would probably be in
the $20k range.

4: Build smaller more specialized tractor replacements like what’s shown here.
Shooting for a sub $20k platform average.

~~~
abledon
Seems like only a matter of time till Tesla has something on the burner for
this. After pickup truck I think they are doing a electric bike then after
that.....

------
adrianmonk
> _But how does the company plan to make money? The co-founders say they aren
> 't going to tell the bots, but plan to provide them as a service through a
> subscription fee._

Is that a typo that should be "sell" instead of "tell", or are they making a
little joke about protecting self-aware robots from the knowledge that they
are being prostituted out for money?

------
mymythisisthis
Farms used a system of cables. The tracker, because it was too heavy, would
only stay on the side and a cable and pulley system employed. The plough would
be suspended from the cable and driven back and forth across the field. The
tracker, and anchoring vehicle on the other side, would be slowly driven in
parallel.

[https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-balance-plough-being-
pul...](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-balance-plough-being-pulled-by-a-
cable-from-a-fowler-ploughing-engine-50085624.html)

[https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CWDH37/fowler-ploughing-
engine-153...](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CWDH37/fowler-ploughing-
engine-15357-built-in-1919-ct-4132-with-cable-drawn-CWDH37.jpg)

I think such a system would be easier to automate: cabling above a field, with
an automated vehicle for spraying, harvesting, dealing with weeds.

~~~
ggm
My mum told me she remembered seeing this in wiltshire in the 1930s, and it
was used for drainage pipe laying a lot too. The "mole" which is pulled
through the ground laying the pipes has a huge amount of static resistance to
overcome, the fowler engine had bloody huge anchors to stop it being pulled
towards the mole.

If you see a steam-engine at a fairground or history society and it has a
giant wheel under the boiler mounted horizontally, thats what its for: this
kind of static engine work.

There were mobile threshers which used it too as a form of PTO using belts.
The whole business was a convoy of about three trucks and associated labour.
Steam trucks. Awesome!

I was hitchhiking in Yorkshire once back in the 1980s, on an "A" road (not a
motorway) and a steam engine passed me by the other way. I was so tempted to
cross the road and hitch a ride the wrong way...

------
shanev
If farming can be done more mechanically than chemically, it'll be better for
the environment in the long run. We'll need less pesticides, and have less
top-soil erosion.

~~~
randomdata
The funny part is that mechanically is how it used to be done. A significant
change from the shift towards chemicals was the enabling of processes like no-
till and cover crops that help with soil erosion and other ecological factors.

~~~
Nasrudith
I think it is important to remember that environmentalism is always loaded
with trade-offs and there are many aspects to it as well. It brings to mind
vicious yet silly lawsuits between plastic and wooden pallet makers over which
was more environmentally friendly given variables like weight, fuel
consumption, ecosystem impact, and biodegradability.

If you really want to be a smartass you can say with one hundred percent truth
that styrofoam and plastic are better for carbon long-term compared to paper
and cardboard which break down over time and release it into the atmosphere.
(Ignoring the relative accounting of the manufacturing processes themselves
for now.)

~~~
shanev
Aren’t paper and cardboard biodegradable compared to styrofoam and plastic?
The atmosphere and soil know how to handle it.

~~~
Nasrudith
Yeah the point was that biodegradability also eventually releases it to the
atmosphere. Nonbiodegradability technically sequesters it until burnt but
causes its own problems given things like microplastics.

------
phkahler
Farming is already incredibly efficient. Anyone who wants it to be even more
efficient is just a huge company wanting to rid their supply chain of humans
entirely.

~~~
phil248
"Anyone who wants it to be even more efficient..."

...is a reasonable person, far as I can tell. Or is there an upper limit on
desired efficiency?

~~~
phkahler
touche. But I do believe there are upper limits on desired efficiency in some
cases. I'm not a fan of eliminating jobs in all cases. In agriculture I'm not
a fan of consolidation and I see the endgame as a few huge companies owning
most of the farmland in the US (most of the land) and all those jobs going
away. So I guess I'm not against efficiency so much as consolidation of power
and ownership. Perhaps one day we'll all have our own robotic gardener, but I
doubt it.

------
Regardsyjc
There's a thread on Fast.ai about a similar project called Open Sprayer, "An
autonomous land drone crop sprayer".

It was great to see deep learning being applied to real problems, read about
some of the initial issues like struggling to train a model to detect weeds,
and see him build and develop his prototype over the last year.

[https://forums.fast.ai/t/grassland-weed-
detector/7635](https://forums.fast.ai/t/grassland-weed-detector/7635)

[http://www.opensprayer.com/](http://www.opensprayer.com/)

~~~
mrfusion
Any ideas how to get involved in projects like this?

------
geggam
Tractors dont just do one thing. They are quite a versatile piece of
equipment.

Portable power plant ( PTO shaft is huge ), taking thousands of lbs of grain
to the storage bin, and countless other tasks.

~~~
blensor
Yes it's always funny and kind of scary to look at when the farmers in our
area put a Tractor next to the fixed water pumps that are located on their
fields and have them running without anyone nearby. The tractors are driving
the water pumps directly and the shaft that connects them is usually exposed
without any safeguards around it.

~~~
vvanders
While the PTO shafts are "exposed" these days they're in a sheath that covers
the whole length with guards on both ends. You still want to be _really_
careful around them but things have become much safer.

That said, farm equipment still needs to be treated with a healthy amount of
respect, being lax around any running machinery will easily get you killed.

~~~
blensor
I don't think that's the case here, I can see the whole shaft rotating, and
also could easily touch the joints where it is connected at both ends. But the
tech they are using is sometimes more than 20 years old I guess, so maybe new
ones are required to have protections. Anyway, I am treating those things with
a healthy kind of respect.

~~~
vvanders
Yeah, sounds like it's an older PTO shaft. The newer ones are much, much safer
but the guards make them an absolute pain to grease properly.

------
eksemplar
If I was younger, farming tech is definitely the place I'd be headed.

Imagine being able to change the world.

~~~
shriek
So, I'm not that young but how would a person living in an apartment in the
city go about start learning this?

I mean I can kind of see the tech involved in this but actually putting into
practice is probably going to be challenging due to the circumstances.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Go do some Farm-stay holidays and ask lots of questions. While there, ask
around for other farms that will show you around. Talk to them, look for pain
points, then go home and work on solutions. If you come up with something they
agree would be helpful, let them be your beta testers (for free). You'll be
helping real people in real ways, and might stumble on something that can
change the industry.

I have family on farms, and friends who work in larger scale farming, and have
spent plenty of time at both. They're always happy to hear about things that
could make their lives easier, but most of the big startups are coming at this
completely wrong and offering expensive over-complicated "solutions" that
don't solve anything the real farmers really care that much about.

~~~
shriek
I don't know why I've never heard of farm-stay holidays until now. I'll have
to find one which is more hands-on.

------
petersand
I'm working on similar machines. The goal is to do farming that is better for
the soil, uses less water and fertilizer, and doesn't use any pesticides
(aside from beneficial insects).

The economics of farming are certainly tricky, but I think we can make it
work. We may start out by operating our own farms.

If you're experienced in mechanical and electrical design and fabrication and
want to help (in San Francisco), let me know (info at modularscience dot com).

------
B1FF_PSUVM
_" The company's own figures claim that Small Robot Company could cut
chemicals and emissions by 95 per cent, increase revenues by up to 40 per cent
and reduce costs up to 60 per cent."_

They forgot to toss in figures for capital and return on investment, that
would really seal the deal.

------
gavztheouch
I am also building an open source small robot for the farm.
www.opensprayer.com trying to design for a total build cost of £2000. The idea
is to use machine learning to identify weeds in my grass fields and
selectivity spray them.

------
Nasrudith
While I suspect small robots would have a place in the future eventually I'm
not entirely sure if tractors would be entirely replaced - I would expect bulk
tasks to be handled by a tractor more efficiently. They certainly have the
potential to be far more versatile as platforms however.

~~~
King-Aaron
You're correct. Small robots aren't going to help you pull a road train out of
a flooded track. I'd imagine though it would help offset large fleets of large
vehicles, however.

------
stretchwithme
Robots will eventually be doing everything in agriculture. Even warding off
pests. That will enable farming happen in all kinds of impossible places, like
on roofs and the side of buildings. They'll even be harvesting and selling
produce.

We'll see very small vehicles on the road that humans can't even fit into,
supporting a huge automated economy. Not just for farming but for
manufacturing too.

------
jackfoxy
Didn't read the article, but wow, if someone would build an asparagus
harvester that could bring back fresh Sacramento Delta asparagus. The sh*t
served in Bay Area restaurants and pathetically displayed in markets now is
pathetic.

