HexaGrow Navigates with LIDAR to Tend the Greenhouse
While greenhouses provide a great way to keep plants safe from the cold weather outside, tending them is still a largely manual operation…
While greenhouses provide a great way to keep plants safe from the cold weather outside, tending them is still a largely manual operation. As a final year project in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Mithira Udugama and team have come up with the “HexaGrow” robot to help with the job. It measures soil moisture and pH levels, as well as temperature and humidity — all of which can be monitored by its human operators via a smartphone app.
This robot — while it appears to still be a prototype — is able to navigate using a LIDAR system that scans the immediate environment. When it gets to the vicinity of what it’s going to analyze, it can then use a gripper arm to assess soil moisture by plugging a sensor into the ground. pH calculations, however, are a bit more involved, as an end-of-arm scoop picks up soil, and deposits it into a mixing chamber where it is measured with a load cell. The appropriate amount of water is then added depending on weight so that an accurate reading can be attained.
Given the robot’s mobile capabilities and arm function, it almost looks like something out of a science fiction film, an effect only helped along by what appears to be carbon-fiber construction. While specific details of the build are slim at this point, you can see it in action showing off its various functions in the video below.