At Deepfield robotics we developed the technology for autonomous vehicles to improve conventional and organic weed management as part of our mission to sustainably increase agricultural production whilst minimizing environmental impact. Effective weed management is crucial to maximize crop yield. We developed small light weight robots, technology to distinguish crop from weed and various methods of destroying weeds.
Farmers are under growing pressure to increase production to feed a growing population, while at the same time considering environmental impact and constraints on land, water and labour. The increasingly larger farm machines cause significant soil compaction damage and are a single point of failure. Hence, in this project we developed the technology for small, inexpensive, cooperative robots for agriculture. This project was comprised of five themes: vision-based obstacle detection, vision-based [...]
The iRat (intelligent Rat animat Technology) is a rat animat robot designed for robotic and neuroscience teams as a tool for studies in navigation, embodied cognition, and neuroscience research. The rat animat has capabilities comparable to the (then) popular standard Pioneer DX robots, but is an order of magnitude smaller in size and weight. The robot’s specifications are: approximately 0.08m2 with a mass of 0.5kg, camera sensor, proximity and odometry sensors, [...]
Online ROS allows people to view, edit, compile and execute ROS code in the browser. It is also supports shared collaborative coding. This could be used for online ROS based interviews, in teaching environments and to store complete working examples. It uses NodeJS for the server, Ace for the web based editor, docker for isolated execution, robot web tools for communicating between ROS and the browser and Yjs for shared coding. Available open source at https://github.com/davidmball/online_ros
The RoboRoos Robot Soccer team competed in the Small Size League of the annual RoboCup competitions. The goal of the RoboCup federation is "By the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team." The rules are similar to the human version of the game (FIFA), other than the elimination of the offside rule as well as modifications that accommodate [...]
This project is fast-tracking robotic technology for farms. Its purpose is to reinvigorate agriculture through increased production and reduced costs. Such technology can be used to conduct autonomous multi-vehicle operations in applications of weed management, fertilising, and seeding. The use of multiple, cost-effective field robots can enable alternative weed destruction methods such as mechanical, thermal or chemical. It can also enable autonomous methods for picking fruit and vegetables. The Strategic [...]
Seed breeding is a critical part of agriculture and ensures food security through the development of new crop varieties that are higher-yielding, disease and drought resistant and adapted for each region. Best practise is to have breeders measure and record traits across a large number of seed trials. However, it is hard to get consistent measurements across breeders especially across different regions. There are also limits to what a person [...]
The Martial Arts Tournament System (MATS) is a complete open-source system to manage the running of a tournament. MATS' features include: online registration for coaches, tools for divisioning, entering and printing various results. support for a broad range of division types including: sparring, patterns, round robin, special techniques, power breaking, and a wide variety of team events. MATS has been used for approximately 15+ national and international tournaments with several thousand [...]
aka Robot Arm for Video Screen Manipulation The goal of the SAParm Project was to produce a proof-of-concept robotic video conferencing system to convey gestures of a remote conference participant. It could mimic human gestures such as nodding and shaking its head; show interest or strong feeling by moving forward; and indicate disinterest by moving backwards. It also moved in a very natural way by first turning its head, followed by [...]
aka energy efficient legged locomotion The goal of this project was to create a new generation of legged robots that can traverse over rugged terrain in an energy-efficient manner. The team designed and tested a new energy efficient joint mechanism suitable for the robot’s knee. In particular, the joint’s stiffness can be changed on the fly so that it can cope with ground of varying hardness. We also demonstrated that [...]