Robohub.org
cultibotics
Technology for its own sake vs. benefits
John Payne
23 Dec 2012
On using robots to make gardening scalable to millions of acres…
You might wonder why I want to turn land management over to robots. Is it because I'm such a geek that I think everything goes bet...
Quote from Clay Johnson, author of “The Information Diet”
John Payne
30 Jul 2012
We industrialized our agricultural firms, consolidating them into multinational, billion dollar publicly traded corporations. As a result, they no longer have nutritional responsibility, they have fid...
Aeroponics (using mist in place of full submersion)
John Payne
15 Jul 2012
LED lights are far more efficient than incandescents, but enough light to drive photosynthesis will still require significant power, so one still might ask where the power is going to come from....
Video: new remote sensors from Agri Con at DLG Field Days
John Payne
09 Jul 2012
See on Scoop.it - Cultibotics
Hermann Leithold, product manager for Agri Con, explains the company’s precision technologies at its display at DLG Field Days in Bernburg-Strenzfeld, Germany, held ...
TE+ND Rover in Boca Bearings competition
John Payne
05 Jul 2012
In case you've forgotten, this video provides a clear explanation of the concept behind and the mechanical workings of the TE+ND Rover.
For more, check out their page on the com...
Field Robot Event 2012 in video
John Payne
05 Jul 2012
The first video in this playlist is a presentation given last year at the announcement of the event. The rest were taken at the event itself, and show the nature of the competition as well a...
10th annual Field Robot Event underway
John Payne
28 Jun 2012
This year's Field Robot Event (FRE 2012) began today and runs through Saturday. I will bring together what reports I am able to find once the dust settles, but meanwhile you can view videos from past ...
Nikolaus Correll at TEDx Front Range 2012
John Payne
16 Jun 2012
University of Colorado Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll, speaking at TEDx Front Range earlier this year, outlined his vision for transforming agriculture through robotic cultivation.
...
2012 Field Robot Event, June 28th – 30th
John Payne
16 Jun 2012
This will be the 10th edition of the Field Robot Event. Organized by Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Wageningen UR (University & Research), it will be held in Venlo, The Nether...
Agricultural robotics at the European Robotics Forum 2012
John Payne
16 Apr 2012
A press release issued by the European Robotics Platform website regarding agricultural robotics as a presence at the European Robotics Forum 2012 makes plain not only that there is a significant leve...
Horto domi: The open garden by Outer Babylon
John Payne
25 Mar 2012
More information available here and here....
Platform for agricultural robotics development
John Payne
05 Mar 2012
Something that would help move the work on robotic sensors and manipulators for agriculture forward would be an affordable, robust platform on which they could be mounted and transported through a fie...
Australian research organization’s description of agricultural robotics
John Payne
09 Jan 2012
On a web page describing their current efforts in agricultural robotics, CSIRO ICT Centre describes the focus area this way:
The application of field robotics to agriculture is an emerging area of ...
IPM: Integrated pest management
John Payne
16 Dec 2011
The concept of Integrated Pest Management has been around for several decades, and is just as useful in a robotic, no-till scenario as it is combined with conventional, traction-based agricu...
Reforming agriculture through more sophisticated mechanization
John Payne
10 Dec 2011
Historically, at least since the mechanization of agriculture began in earnest, there have been two primary measures of agricultural productivity, the amount that could be grown on a given acreage and...
Abandoned railway roadbeds
John Payne
26 Nov 2011
In the Emma Marris video, linked from a previous post, there appears to be an abandoned railway roadbed in the background. Such spaces almost automatically return to nature, left to themselves for a ...
Emma Marris: Rambunctious Garden
John Payne
26 Nov 2011
While I fully expect Emma Marris would deem the use of robots to create her Rambunctious Garden a distraction, and my contention that robotics is necessary to the achievement of sustainabili...
The importance of robotics to the achievement of sustainability
John Payne
28 Sep 2011
In a mid-August post bearing the same title, on my primary blog, I stated:
I firmly believe that (short of convincing the vast majority of people to return to subsistence farming, something which cou...
Agricultural robotics and employment
John Payne
12 Jun 2011
At least with regard to agriculture, the effect of robotics upon employment depends on the approach taken. If your goal is to further reduce the number of people deriving an income from farming, and y...
Some things can’t be done without robots
John Payne
26 Mar 2011
I had pretentions of being a back-to-the-land hippy before I ever became seriously interested in robotics, but my brother successfully popped that bubble with a simple, unarguable observation, that mo...
Harvest automation
John Payne
06 Feb 2011
And so it begins! The January 14th episode of Robots Podcast features an interview with Joe Jones, CTO of Harvest Automation (previously with iRobot).
Harvest Automation didn't start out ...
The ascendency of Arduino
John Payne
16 Jan 2011
http://vimeo.com/18539129
This video consists of the earliest participants in the Arduino project talking about how it got started.
Checking Vimeo, there are over 4,000 video...
DARPA-led consortium casts a wide net
John Payne
31 Oct 2010
A consortium of U.S. government agencies, lead by DARPA, has jointly issued a solicitation for small business proposals: Joint-Agency SBIR Funding Opportunity Announcement.
The participating ...
The potential of agriculture as a market for robotics
John Payne
16 Aug 2010
When I imagine robots tending land, it's nearly always machines that are supported from above, on a beam that itself is supported by wheels running either on rails or in troughs that double as a deliv...
A plant positioning system based on suspension
John Payne
02 Aug 2010
Something which could be accomplished through robotics that couldn't economically be accomplished using human labor would be maximizing the utilization of a very limited surface area (and the sunlight...
The pursuit of collaboration
John Payne
05 May 2010
Two heads are generally better than one, and while that truism doesn't necessarily scale very well, it can and often does in the open source software movement.
Willow Garage is out to make it...
Rail & gantry bot
John Payne
13 Mar 2010
This is actually a 3D printer, but [elevate the rails and] replace the print head with a couple of general purpose robotic arms and you've got the makings of a gardening robot.
Reposted f...
The empowerment of small-scale industrial designers
John Payne
01 Mar 2010
This Wired video discusses how easy it has become to get ahold of custom parts. Not mentioned, but quite obviously working away, is a 3D printer, building up a bust using deposited material.
...
The application of ‘elegance’ to machine behavior
John Payne
30 Jan 2010
We all have some idea of what elegance means, whether our notion of it is tied up with silky evening dresses, polished wood and brass, chandeliers and stained glass windows, exotic carpets, and expens...
Contrasting two robotic developments
John Payne
23 Nov 2009
The first is an autonomous agricultural robot that you can actually buy, or will be able to soon. It runs on gas and will cost around $100,000 when it becomes available early next year. FHI claims t...
Le Petit Prince takes attentiveness to an extreme
John Payne
31 Aug 2009
Are your plants suffering from lack of attention? Perhaps this little robot is what you need. Unfortunately, you'll need a few thousand of them if you plan to do any serious gardening.
Repo...
Cultibotics as a quality of life issue
John Payne
26 Jul 2009
Your typical farm raises at most a few crops, frequently only one. Because it's what I know, and because it's in practically every processed food you can buy, let's take wheat as an example.
...
Of thresholds and the forces that drive change
John Payne
29 Jun 2009
"But why would you want to turn farming over to machines?"
Ahem! Farming has been conducted primarily by machines for going on a hundred years, at least in the United States. I want to subs...
Convertible manipulator/sheer
John Payne
02 Mar 2009
A manipulator with four or six ‘fingers’ positioned symmetrically around a central axis might also serve as a sheer, able to snip along two or three planes. The cutting edges would be the edges o...
Keeping dust off optics
John Payne
02 Mar 2009
Whether lenses for machine vision, or lenses and mirrors to direct laser light, the need to keep dust off their surfaces should be obvious.
One likely solution is to surround the lens with a ...
