Robotic Farming, Aussie Style

Australian roboticists from the Queensland University of Technology have developed a prototype agricultural robot that uses machine vision to identify both weed and crop plants before either uprooting or poisoning the weeds or applying fertiliser to the crop.

The machine is a wide platform designed to straddle a strip of the field upon which it is working, with electric wheel motors for propulsion. It is solar-powered, and it is envisaged that a farm could have several of them continuously at work.

At a superficial level there is nothing new in the robot, its propulsion, or even the plant husbandry and weeding equipment. The really clever technology lies in the identification and classification of the plants it will encounter. It is on the success or failure of this in real farm environments that the robot’s future will hinge. The university’s next step will be to take it on-farm, and the ABC report linked above has a wonderfully pithy quote from a farmer on the subject. You can see the machine in action in the video below the break.

Farming robots have a significant following among the hardware hacker community, but it is possible that the machine-vision and plant-identifying abilities of this one would be beyond most hackers. However it is still an interesting project to watch, marking as it does a determined attempt to take the robot out of the lab and into real farm settings.

We’ve covered farming robots a few times in the past here at Hackaday. Gantry-based robots like Farmbot, the walking hexapod Prospero robot farmer, or a further six-legged robot also called Farmbot. Practical farming robots have been a little more rare though, with a Canadian autonomous John Deere tractor made not by engineers but by a farmer being one of the most promising.

Thanks [muA] for the tip.

Filed under: robots hacks

Projection Mapping in Motion Amazes

Projection mapping is pretty magical; done well, it’s absolutely miraculous when the facade of a building starts popping out abstract geometric objects, or crumbles in front of our very eyes. “Dynamic projection mapping onto deforming non-rigid surface” takes it to the next level. (Watch the video below.)

A group in the Ishikawa Watanabe lab at the University of Tokyo has a technique where they cover the target with a number of dots in an ink that is only visible in the infra-red. A high-speed (1000 FPS!) camera and some very fast image processing then work out not only how the surface is deforming, but which surface it is. This enables them to swap out pieces of paper and get the projections onto them in real time.

Make sure that you do watch the video. The bit where they aim a fan at the projection-mapped T-shirt, and the dancing animated Stanford Bunny flaps in the breeze along with it is truly amazing.

Want more of the projection-mapping craze of the early 2010’s? Check out this post on projection mapping with industrial robot arms, or a projection mapped sandbox.  If that’s not enough for you, have a look at this footage from [Amon Tobin]’s live tour in 2012.

Thanks [Stuart] for the tip!

Filed under: video hacks

This Week in Making: Waterjet Jack-O’-Lanterns and the Truth About Wireless Power

This past week the community of YouTube makers show us the meaning of friendship and stopped us from doing something stupid.

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The post This Week in Making: Waterjet Jack-O’-Lanterns and the Truth About Wireless Power appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.

Ultra-Polished, Handmade Settlers of Catan Redux

[Fuzzy Wobble] and [Amy Wang]’s Deep Space Settlers project is a one-of-a-kind re-invention of the popular board game Settlers of Catan, and showcases the polished results that are possible with the fabrication tools and methods available in many workshops and hackerspaces today. We reached out to the makers for some of the fabrication details, which they were happy to share.

(For those of you who are familiar with the game, technically this is a remake and slight evolution of the Seafarers expansion to the base Settlers of Catan game. A few rule changes were made, but it is mostly a total remodel and redesign.)

The project page doesn’t talk much about the fabrication process, but laser-cut plastic is a major component. The tiles are black acrylic hexagons with circular pieces attached. The circular pieces are made from different translucent colors (which vendors often call ‘fluorescent’ colors) except for the gold, which is a gold-mirrored acrylic. They are engraved on the bottom, which gives the patterns their frosty white etched appearance. Mounted with the etched side downward onto the black hexagons, the contrast really makes the design pop. The cities are two-piece acrylic assemblies made in a variety of translucent colors, and the larger trophies are laser-engraved on both sides; text on front, pattern on back.

[Fuzzy Wobble] kindly provided Hackaday with some additional details on the methods and materials used:

• Hex pieces were all laser cut and etched on acrylics. They were attached using a double-sided tape.
• The resource cards were made with layers of premium paper. Gloss ink was used to print on the matte paper for the text and textured backs.
• The patterns on the backs of the development cards were created using silver foiling. “A tricky process that produces astonishing results given how simple it is.”
• The numbered markers were created using acrylic hemispheres, and again, silver foiling. “The numbers were without a doubt the most tedious part of the project and had to be done by hand in a way that there were no imperfections, otherwise they would be magnified by the lens effect of the hemisphere.”
• The player pieces were made with the laser cutter with various colors of tint acrylic.
• The box was internally partitioned with laser-cut acrylic.
• The perimeter pieces are 1/4″ acrylic, and backed with high friction material to ensure the board cannot slide out of alignment.

It’s clear that the builders of this project know what they’re doing. However, using a tool well only gets you part way. It’s one thing to etch a pattern or cut some acrylic, but it’s another thing to etch or cut that plastic then attach it onto something else without showing a single glue smudge, fingerprint, or scratch on the end result. Even if you start with quality parts, experience and attention to detail (and the patience and willingness to apply both) is what will separate a hack job from a polished end product. We certainly know there are plenty of ways to fail at laser cutting.

As for the other methods mentioned (like silver foiling), do any of you have experience using those processes to get sharp-looking end results? Any tips to share? Let us know in the comments!

Filed under: misc hacks

America’s largest gaming museum: Rare games, crazy prototypes, and giant Pong

FRISCO, Texas—Finally, there's a museum made for people like me.

The National Videogame Museum (yes, they spell it as one word) has been open since April of this year in the Dallas-area suburb of Frisco, and it houses an incredible collection of gaming memorabilia. The rarest cartridges, systems, and prototypes are all here, protected as if they were the Mona Lisa (and for some game collectors, they may as well be). Come here to marvel at one-of-a-kind finds like a Nintendo World Championship cartridge, a mint-condition Ultra Hand toy, or the only known white-molded Atari 2600 in the world.

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Litter Basket Automation

Sometimes the technology part of a project isn’t the hard part. It is having an idea for something both useful and doable. Sure, a robot butler that would do your cleaning and laundry would be useful, but might be out of reach for most of us. On the other hand, there’s only so many use cases for another blinking LED.

[Martinhui] knows how to use an ultrasonic sensor with an Arduino. Driving a motor isn’t that hard, either. The question is: what do you do with that? [Martin’s] answer: Automate a trash can. You can see a video of the result, below.

You can find commercial versions of this, of course, but what fun is that? The can is a bit small, but a larger motor or a different mechanical design could scale it up easily.

As robotic trash cans go, this isn’t that ambitious, but it is highly doable. If only it connected to the Internet.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks

Primer on Servos Hits All the Basics

Servos are pretty basic fare for the seasoned hacker. But everyone has to start somewhere, and there’s sure to be someone who’ll benefit from this primer on servo internals. Who knows – maybe even the old hands will pick up something from a fresh perspective.

[GreatScott!] has been building a comprehensive library of basic electronics videos over the last few years that covers everything from using a multimeter to programming an Arduino. The last two installments delve into the electromechanical realm with a treatment of stepper motors along with the servo video below. He covers the essentials of the modern RC-type servo in a clear and engaging style that makes it easy for the newbie to understand how a PWM signal can translate into positional changes over a 180° sweep. He shows how to control a servo directly with an Arduino, with bonus points for including a simple 555-based controller circuit too. A quick look at the mods needed to convert any servo to continuous rotation wraps up the video.

If [GreatScott!]’s video whets your appetite for more, be sure to check out [Richard Baguley]’s deeper dive into servos. And when you’re ready to put your new-found knowledge into practice, maybe a nice project would be to convert a hobby servo into a linear actuator.

Filed under: classic hacks, misc hacks