Field Robotics - Markets & Applications

Vegetable farming still relies today on labor-intensive processes. Weed control in particular, which is critical to ensure good yields, is mostly taken care of by hand crews who walk the field with hoes. After prototyping for 5 years in the epicenter of lettuce production in North America, farm robotics company FarmWise released its first commercial robotic weeder. This machine can detect crops from weeds and mechanically uproot the undesired plants with extreme precision using deep learning and actuation control. This talk will walk you through the team’s journey and learnings from the first demo to the architectural decisions behind the new product.

Tractors are at the center of the farm, running virtually all the operations that occur on a given day. By leveraging a unique set of recent tech advancements to automate and digitize the tractor, Monarch Tractor is creating a platform that enables farmers to run their farms like a factory – automatic, traceable and data-driven. In this session, learn how this transformation of what a tractor can do will unlock benefits for workers, the farm and agriculture more broadly.

The Raise Robotics founding team comes from unique backgrounds in construction and robotics. Learn how this construction robotics startup brought their robot from an idea, to the lab and to field testing in just 90 days.

A crash course to bring robotics engineers up-to-date on the current state of the art on force/torque sensing in unstructured environments with a focus on field robotics covering:

• Key Specifications – Latest advances in force/torque technology and what specifications they make possible
• Unique Considerations for the Field – Mechanical shock, ingress protection, & lightweighting
• Best Practices – Grounding, high-flex cabling, connectors, mounting, & thermal compensation

Mobile robots are increasingly being used in the agricultural industry. During this session, you will hear from a pioneer in the agricultural robotics industry, with vast experience developing and deploying mobile robots on working farms. The primary objective of Burro mobile robots is to assist in the transportation of goods, alleviating the workload of farm laborers and enhancing the overall efficiency of farm operations.

Robotics for next generation applications in the field are often a well-synchronized combination of three key capabilities – mobility, manipulation and sensing. Of these three capabilities, robotic mobility and manipulation are especially challenging because the tasks and workspaces are highly variable, and often unpredictable. Identifying new approaches, and enabling robots to be rapidly reconfigured, are key to unlocking the real value of automation in the field.

In this session, HEBI Robotics will present recent innovative approaches to mobility and manipulation that have been incorporated into robotic systems across a variety of applications and industries.

Examples include:
• An inchworm-like arm that navigates around confined spaces via suction or magnets and deploys tools in extremely difficult to reach spaces.
• An in-pipe crawler ‘train’ that can be modified to fit a variety of pipe sizes and deploy tooling / sensors in complex pipe structures with multiple bends.
• A multi-purpose mobile robot that can be reconfigured in the field to support a wide variety of sensors and tooling, and can even be adjusted in the field to swap out different types of wheels and treads.