Autonomous Urban Gardener

The Urban Gardener is an idea I had while reading the contest: The Autonomous Robot Challenge here on hackster.io. My idea is simple, I grew up a farmer and knew the best way to keep people from being hungry was to grow a garden. But not everyone has access to a plot of land to put a garden or the ability to do so. Then I thought about all the homeless population we have where I live. They are everywhere, and they are hungry. Urban areas have lots of empty space, dirt lots. Usually filled with trash and other debris. There in the idea of my Urban Gardener was born.

For the purposes of this post I will be building a small gardening robot using various parts and tools I have, or if hackster.io decides to give me one of those DonkeyCar kits I will use that plus my other components to make it even better. The parts list will grow as the project progresses. I am really excited about this one because it makes use of wasted space and can help feed people.

Essentially Urban Gardener is an autonomous robot that will either seek out dirt when set to free roam, or preferably navigate to areas specified via an app, then proceed to cultivate and farm that area in any environment. The robot will use AI to do many things, such as identify a suitable area for planting, move trash out of the way, determine crop from weed, look for moisture level in the ground to determine if watering is needed, etc. The larger the robot the more it would be capable of. Holding a water tank adds a lot of weight, adding the ability to weed a garden adds height, extra sensors, etc. Preferably if a city were to roll out an Urban Gardener it would be quite large to deter theft and be able to handle larger areas with ease. So in order to keep my project doable for the contest and properly scoped I will focus on the main aspects of the Urban Gardener.

What Urban Gardener will do (for this project):

• Use the cloud, AI, and sensors to accomplish its goals

• stay within a defined area using GPS and other sensors

• Use AI vision to determine the difference between dirt and plant

• Cultivate the land in that area, tilling, removing debris, etc

• Plant seeds in defined area at proper distances for optimal growth

• Add solar charging cycles to allow it to be more energy efficient

A stretch goal for this would be to also teach the AI to know the difference between the types of crops it is planting and weeds that may be growing in the garden. This can be done by teaching the AI to recognize all the different phases of the crops growth. And maybe add a mechanism for removing the weed. I have seen a Roomba like small garden weed remover robot, but it was low tech, it would cut anything shorter then its chassis with a weed-eater tool, leaving the root to continue to grow. I would want my weed remover to get the root, perhaps an arm with a shovel to dig it up and place it into a hopper.

Possible pit falls/challenges that would be encountered in a real world environment for the Urban Gardener to over come and can be simulated:

• rocks that it would need to identify and move

• immovable objects it would need to work around

• changing variables, i.e. trash tossed in garden during planting

The design phase of the project will include robot chassis sensor placement and test garden plot layout along with pit falls to overcome.

Programming phase will have a lot of trial and error, getting the robot to recognize dirt from grass or concrete. Ensuring it stays within its geo-fence regardless if external circumstances, such as someone pushing it out. It would need to be able to navigate back to its assigned area from within an unknown area. This is essential for 2 reasons, theft, and if it is reassigned to another geo-location it would need to be able to use machine vision to navigate to the assigned geo-fence safety.

This project will be updated while it is under construction. I have some robotic parts on the way to start parting together some form of a chassis. I have a 3D printer I can use to prototype extra parts it will need, such as the planting tool. I will pull the raspberry pi from my arcade machine and start working with the software as well. Much to learn and much to do. This is a work in progress.

I also will gladly post designs and code here for others to use. I will be using a pipe design for planting we used when I was a child for planting corn. I will let my wife decide which crop we will plant, maybe corn LOL