In agriculture and on the household plot you cannot have extra hands, since there are always not enough help there. Therefore, the idea of an electronic assistant (bot) is very relevant. The idea is not new: agricultural assistants are being developed and already exist abroad, for example, in America.
Farmerbot is a product of the FAMCS students’ project activity in 2020-2021. The project supervisor is Aleksey Tsygulin, Associate Professor, Theoretical and Applied Computer Science (video).
What makes Farmerbot different is that it can be completely assembled from domestic components, including mechanic and electronic ones as well as software.
The Farmerbot complex is designed to control the plants cultivation. The development was carried out within the project training
The Farmerbot is an aluminum farming frame moving along the bed sides on wheels. The frame is equipped with a carriage containing a camera, sensors and an executive mechanism for planting, watering, weeding and other necessary operations which moves transversely along the frame. All the movements of the complex depend on a specialized controller that collects information from sensors and cameras, sends this information to the cloud data storage, and forms a task for watering, weeding, etc.based on the schedule and the collected information.
The controller monitors the water level in the irrigation tank and sends a notification, if the supply is insufficient.
The size of the treated bed can vary from 100 x 60 cm to 6 x 3 m, since the system is easily scaled. Moreover, one controller can work for up to 8 manipulators. Thus, the area of the cultivated land can be 144 m2.
The Farmerbot can be used both indoors and outdoors. When used in greenhouses or for growing seedlings, the Farmerbot can be additionally equipped with lighting devices. For working outdoors in the future, the developers have made provisions for adding specialized pest control tools and rain sensors. There are ideas to make a manipulator with much greater coverage and even with a cable suspension.
The Farmerbot is best suited for growing seedlings, as it allows organizing very careful treatment of plants that have not yet become strong and providing optimal growth conditions for them.
"So far, we have a small prototype of the device," said Aleksey Tsygulin. "Now it is a laboratory installation for growing plants, as well as a training manual that allows future engineers to master knowledge and skills on a real problem solving. If we talk about the Farmerbot practical application in agriculture, even its current configuration can be useful for farmers for handling seedlings and selection. We also plan to offer it, for example, to colleagues from the Agrarian University."
The current laboratory installation is designed to test the capabilities of the device. So, the plans for further project work of students include debugging the management system, as well as optimizing software and collecting statistics.
The developers paid special attention to the fact that the Internet connection is not a necessary condition for the effective operation of the Farmerbot.
The Farmerbot is a self-sufficient device, whose sensors and manipulators work independently. The data accumulation only expands its possibilities to interact with humans and obtain up-to-date information about plant growth parameters from the cloud, up-to-date knowledge about the optimal irrigation or lighting regime depending on the species, variety, phase of plant growth and environmental parameters.