Department of Off-Road Equipment Management may not have that much attention for fully autonomous robotic harvesting model at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Students in the Meeting in Minneapolis Minnesota but, definitely promised to put it in the real field in the coming times.
The students used LEGO MindStorms building system and ROBOLAB, which helped each vehicle out of total three to perform accordingly to the program. Professor Tony Grift explains the demonstration in following words:
The challenge was to design an automated harvesting operation that used one harvester and one or more unloading carts. An autonomously guided harvester sends wireless messages to an unloader to indicate that its bin is full. The task of the unloader is then to engage the harvester and return to a location where it dumps its loads into a pit. Then the process starts again and the goal is to move as much simulated grain as possible from the harvester to the pit in a five-minute time period.
However, there is still much to work on to practically witness a robotic harvester transferring heaps of BBs onto unloaders. Machines are preparing to throw humans out of agriculture even.
Via: Wired
