Robots for Microfarms (ROMI) - Rover Video - D2.2

The following video shows the functionalities and usage of the Farmers Rover developed within the Robots for Microfarms (ROMI) project funded by EU Grant 773875

Videos are available in:

• hi-res (4K Apple ProRes)
• mid-red (4K H264)
• low-res (1080p H264)

You can also watch it on Youtube

Video script:

The ROMI Rover is a farming tool that assists vegetable farmers in maintaining vegetable beds free of weeds. It does this by regularly hoeing the surface of the soil and thus preventing small weeds from taking root. It can do this task mostly autonomously and requires only minor changes to the organization of the farm. It is designed for vegetable beds between 70 cm and 120 cm wide and for crops up to 50 cm high. It currently handles two types of crops, lettuce and carrots. The lettuce can be planted out in any    layout, most likely in a quincunx pattern.

This robot is designed for smaller market farms of less than 5 ha but the size of the farm and the amount of crop you want to cover will determine the number of rovers you will use, A weekly passage of the robot should be sufficient to keep the population of weeds under control.

The Romi Rover can help to control the pressure of weeds on crops. Too many weeds take resources such as water and sunlight away from the main crop and crop productivity will drop as a result.  Because organic farming cannot use chemical herbicides, weed control is an important activity. In many cases, weeding is done manually which requires not only a lot of time but also is a demanding physical task. That’s where the Romi Rover steps in. It can alleviate this task from farmers so that they can concentrate on more rewarding activities.

The Romi Rover is positioned over a vegetable bed, it cleans the top-soil with a rotating precision hoe. The rover must be taken to the field using the remote control or by simply pushing it.  The use of the rover requires relatively flat beds. To assist the rover in navigating the length of a crop bed, it is necessary to install guide rails such as  tubes or wooden boards along the bed.

Once the rover is positioned along the rails at the beginning of a bed, it hoes the surface of the soil whilst moving itself the entire length of the bed.

Two weeding methods are available. First, a precision weeding method in which the top-soil is turned over in between the plants. Second, a classical weeding method in which standard weeding tools are dragged behind the rover between the rows of vegetables.

For the precision weeding method, the rover uses a camera to detect the plants that are underneath the rover. It then moves the precision weeding tool over the surface as it closely passes the detected vegetables.
Although the rover is autonomous for weeding a single bed, it is important to stay in proximity to the rover. A U-turn must also be manually performed at the end of the bed and the rover repositioned in line with the rails of the next bed.

Multiple versions of the Rover have been assembled and tested in different locations to validate and showcase the adaptability of the design for different fabrication processes and field applications.

The rover is available as an Open Source project.  All of the source code and plans are freely available. This allows us to improve the design over time using input from farmers and engineers. That is also why we made the design modular using components that can be found “off-the-shelf” or that can be produced using 3D printers and laser cutters. People with development skills can also contribute. Our software is available online on Github. This makes the Romi Rover a good platform to experiment with innovative tools for farming.