Creation Process

This project was supported by Olds College.

Why?

We are students from across Calgary who are committed to making a difference for our future. Since there is unlimited potential for agriculture-based technology growth in Alberta, we wanted to develop a product that will show agriculture as an attractive and exciting career for the new, upcoming workforce of the next generation while also trying to make farmers lives easier and help foster the growth of the Agri-tech industry in Alberta.

Furthermore, we are committed to making a product that will help us uphold environmental ideals by conserving water resources and protect the fragile ecosystems from damage. With climate change on the rise, we require new and innovative solutions that will help us preserve our environment and planet.

All in all, we aimed to create a solution that will increase the yield, efficiency and profitability of agriculture while simultaneously decreasing its waste and carbon footprint.

Week 1: Empathize and Define

Firstly,

We started off by determining what exactly our robots purpose was-

→ We knew we were going to make a maneuverable robot because we had been provided with small Zumo robots.

- We had a whole lot of ideas...
  - We could have made a robot that would dig,
    - Like a tiller, a seed planter, or an invasive plant remover
  - or one that would have a spraying mechanism,
    - which would have been able to be applied for processes such as watering, fertilizing, pesticide and herbicide dispersion and seeding
  - a testing machine
    - that would test crop health and soil health
  - and even a harvester

... but at the end, we decided on a water level sensor.

Then...

We started our development process.

Week 2: Ideate and Prototype

Proof of concept #1

We designed and constructed our outer shell that would contain the Raspberry Pi and battery bank on CAD.

Week 3: Further Prototyping

Next we needed to build the apparatus that would hold the sensor.

After some deliberation, we settled on a simple apparatus that would hold the pinion and rack system that would be directed by a servo. This mechanism would hold the sensor, and move up and down.

We decided on which features that we wanted to have for our robot

A product is not complete without additional features.

While a water sensor is functional by itself, we wanted a user-friendly product. As we envisioned a robot that would be able to be used remotely, we need a camera module and a GPS so that the user can observe their location and see their robot at work as if they were actually on the farm.

Week 4: Testing and Improvement on our Design

We ran into our first problem

The sensor apparatus was too short and narrow, inhibiting the wires from being able to access the USB-B and Ethernet ports at the back. So we lengthened it so that there was enough space for the wires to reach their ports.

CODING!

Our robot runs on a program that is set up on CODESYS, a coding platform that has some basic graphic design capacities.

With this tool, farmers will be able to make more informed and precise decisions concerning their watering practices. When paired with an effective irrigation system, our tool will allow farmers to be able to more efficiently irrigate their crops, creating the optimal moisture level in their soil, which will also help conserve water.

In turn, while not only saving precious water resources so that stored water does not run out as quickly, this will reduces the amount of freshwater that is consumed by the agricultural industry, and may prevent run-off that leads to fertilizer and other harmful chemicals from entering bodies of water and harming the ecosystem.

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