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Hielke (FRE2007 in Wageningen)
Hielke is a new robot by
the makers of
Sietse, Sietse 2 and Sietse III. Hielke has only two
wheels so it needs to balance by constantly moving
backward and forward. Just how well that works, even on rough terrain,
you can see in the movies below.
On 16 June 2007, Hielke took sixth place in
the contest. Sixth is not a very good result,
but we are very satisfied because: 1) the robot balanced very well,
even on rough terrain,
and 2) the particle filter that merges information about the robot's
movement from odometry with position information derived from the image
analysis, worked very well. When we remove the bugs that plagued us at
the end-of-row turns, we'll have a very fine robot indeed.
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What
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High
resolution
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Low
resolution
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Row following and
turns
(the cable is for logging only)
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movie
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movie |
Row following in
small corn
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movie |
movie |
Rough ride + turn at
end of row
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movie |
movie |
Row following in
large corn
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movie |
movie |
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Sietse III (FRE2006 in Hohenheim)
Sietse III is the final incarnation of a robot that
competed
successfully in the Field Robot Events of 2004 and 2005. It is based on
the chassis of an R/C monster truck, carries a mini-PC board and a
microcontroller and is powered
by 4 racing batteries of 7.2 V each.
Sietse's salient feature is that it navigates on the
basis of vision. "Sietse" is a traditional Dutch name from the north of
the country; in Dutch, this name sounds much the same as "he sees"
("hij ziet ze").
Navigating rows of maize with a camera was relatively easy in
2004 and 2005 when color could be used to separate the green maize from
the decidedly non-green soil. But in this year's
contest the maize is sown into grass or winter barley, making
differentiation on the basis of color alone infeasible. Will Sietse III
wander along blindly, crushing fledgling maize plants in true
monster truck fashion? Or will its masters acquire the requisite image
analysis skills and update the navigation algorithm before the Field Robot Event on 24 June 2006?
Come and see! |
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Sietse 2 (FRE2005 in Wageningen)
The biggest achievement of Sietse 2 was to detect volunteer potato
plants growing between the maize plants. More info is available here.
 
Sietse (FRE2004 in Wageningen)
Sietse was our first ever attempt at robot building. We were truly
amazed and tremendously tickled when we won the second prize, with a
total score that put us only a tiny bit behind seasoned robot
engineers. More info about Sietse is available here.
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