Tech Specs
Specifications are design targets and may change after field testing. Contact us for collaborations and pilots.
Purpose
- Task
- Crop scouting, leaf-disease detection and removal of infected leaves
- Crop
- Cabbage (other leafy crops planned)
- Not for
- Harvesting whole heads (1–3 kg)
Manipulation
- Arms
- 2 × Elephant Robotics myCobot 320, 6-DOF, 1 kg payload each
- Arm A
- Cut-and-hold cutter (high-torque servo + blade): grips and cuts in one motion
- Arm B
- Inspection camera with LED ring light for close-up leaf checks
- Leaf disposal
- On-board collection bin
Compute & AI
- Main computer
- Raspberry Pi 5, 8 GB
- AI accelerator
- Raspberry Pi AI HAT+, 13 TOPS (Hailo-8L)
- Vision model
- Two-stage YOLOv8n: detect → classify
- Classes
- Healthy, Alternaria Spot, Black Rot, Downy Mildew
Real-time control
- Controller
- Cytron MOTION 2350 Pro (RP2350)
- Functions
- Wheel PID, encoders, ELRS input, battery monitor
- Failsafe
- Stops if radio or Pi heartbeat is lost for 200 ms
Perception
- LiDAR
- LDRobot LD19 2D LiDAR (obstacle zone, SLAM)
- Cameras
- Front camera for row scanning; inspection camera on Arm B
- Contact
- Front and rear bumper switches
Mobility
- Drive
- 4WD skid-steer
- Motors
- 4 × JGB37-520 12 V gear motors with Hall encoders
- Frame
- Aluminium extrusion chassis, off-road wheels
- Housing
- Black anodised aluminium, vented, with a hot-swap battery door
Power
- Battery
- 21700 Li-ion pack, 6S2P (12 cells), 21.6 V nominal / 25.2 V full, hot-swap side door
- Power board
- PWR-1 (own design): 5 regulated rails, reverse-polarity and surge protection, battery current sensing
- Runtime
- [To be measured]
Control & comms
- Manual control
- RadioMaster ELRS 2.4 GHz long-range radio
- Close range
- PS5 DualSense controller (optional)
- Telemetry
- 4G link to a web dashboard
- On-board display
- 7-inch screen: live inspection view and identified disease class
Safety
- E-stop
- Mushroom button, hard-wired
- Power cut
- E-stop or bumper cuts arm and motor power in hardware
- Priority
- E-stop / bumper > radio failsafe > manual > autonomy
Software
- Robot OS
- ROS 2 with slam_toolbox and Nav2
- Arms
- pymycobot
- Firmware
- arduino-pico on the RP2350