TLDR: I’m a researcher from the University of Tasmania and i have 4th year engineering students working on farmbot projects - converting to polar to work on a circle garden bed (i know the project has been attempted)
Hi all,
Hope this ends up in the right spot.
I am a researcher in the Engineering department at the University of Tasmania. I manage 4th year honours students working on their major project/thesis, some of whom are currently working on farmbot projects (for 1 year). I’m looking to form connections with people in the farmbot community. As mentioned above the main project this year is to work on converting the coordinate system to allow for larger circular garden beds, using the same hardware. However i plan on supervising many future projects related to farmbot:
AI intergration
Use with aqua/aero ponics
commercial use as a seed planter
Spiral garden beds
Harvesting attachments
Another student is already investigating potential harvesting attachments.
I hope to continue to get students on board and working on projects. I’d like to ask for intial requests/points of focus; to make sure the work the students contribute, aligns with the needs of the community. (Note: ultimately the students will have final say on their project scope and direction)
Basically if you want to help guide a bunch of student engineers, working on farmbot projects. Then watch this space.
Feel free to contact me with technical questions. Because my time is limited (and I am the only FBOS developer) I cannot commit large amounts of time, but I am willing to help get folks “unstuck” if they have very specific questions about the FarmBot software architecture.
Thank-you for your quick reply, your offer is greatly appreciated. We will most certainly reach out if/when, we run into problems we can’t figure out. My only job here at the university is to manage 4th year honours projects - If you or anyone else on the FarmBot team, has any potential future projects you would like investigated, please get in touch.
As you mentioned, at least one other polar coordinate FarmBot project has been done before by a Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo senior project team that we sponsored. Here is the final report in case you hadn’t seen it. In a nutshell: the supporting infrastructure, overall gantry design, and firmware modifications the team came up with were good. What didn’t work so well was the drive mechanism used to rotate the bot.
I personally had pretty good involvement with that project and would be very happy to hop on a video call with your students to help relay some of the learnings. Send me a private message if you would like to plan something!
I’d also be interested in any AI projects and the “commercial use as a seed planter” idea you listed.
Hi @roryaronson , Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!
Not sure if i can’t direct message, because i’m new to the forum, or if i’m just missing something.
I was given the Cal Poly report by someone on reddit earlier this year, so am aware of the work that’s already been done regarding polar coordinates. (the student will be investigating adding z-axis support also, for potential spiralled systems down the line).
There is a second year engineering design class, that i could have work on the physical design components of the polar system as a major project. Then offering it as an honours project in the following year to take all that work and produce a more refined design.
I’d definitely be interested in setting up a meeting.
