Blog #1
Compact Remote-Controlled Car with Plow and Sow Capabilities
Currently, the best way to plant seeds efficiently is to use a sow machine which can be either manual or automatic. Manual systems require someone to physically push the plow machine which does not plant seeds (Figure 1), while the automatic systems are typically attached to tractors and used for much bigger applications (Figure 2). These traditional plowing techniques leave soil vulnerable to erosion and promote agricultural runoff (Huggins). In more recent years, this task has also been completed by attaching a seed dispenser to drones; however, the seeds are just dropped onto the surface of the ground rather than actually planted and are often blown away by the wind or eaten by animals (Pedrini).
Figure 1: 
Figure 2: Industrial Plow and Sow Machine
Our solution will allow the user to remotely operate a vehicle that will both plow and sow the ground, without the need for expensive equipment such as a tractor or the use of manual labor such as plowing and spreading the seeds by hand. The proposed solution will be time and cost-saving, and more compact than larger-scale solutions. The design will be approximately 2 ft by 2 ft or around the size of a traditional lawn mower. The seed-dropping mechanism will consist of a hopper that can hold up to 10 pounds of grass seeds, which can cover 6000 square feet or the average size of a backyard. The mechanism will use solar-powered batteries to operate, and the range of the remote control will be a distance of 250 feet. One of the key challenges we plan on tackling is making the device as powerful as the current manual plowing machine (Figure 1) with the addition of a seed planting solution that has a large capacity renewable power source. Our team plans to set goals by understanding the specific problems associated with current solutions and creating an outline of the key features we want to add or change. We will then identify smaller issues within a larger scope and approach them as individual tasks to track our progress and potentially identify issues early on.
There are many obstacles that our team will need to overcome in terms of conceptualizing and developing a solution that will meet the needs of the problem. One of these obstacles is finding a remote-controlled vehicle that produces enough torque to be able to move the vehicle forward when it has a maximum load on top and a vehicle that will be able to maneuver left and right with the maximum load. Another obstacle is to find a way to ensure that the plow system is plowing the proper depth and can consistently do that in different terrains without severe damage to the plow or the vehicle. To do this, we’ll have to think of some way to add a downward force on the plow so that it is pressing down into the ground as the car maneuvers. We’ll also have to design the car in a way that the seeds are dispersed after plowing the ground at a constant rate. To accomplish this, we’ll have to create a mechanism to control the speed of the car and the dispersion rate from the hopper. Lastly, our goal is to create a machine that can plow and sow the ground with minimal human interaction in the field. To do this, we’ll need to ensure that the sensors we use for the remote-controlled car can obtain a large enough radius to be able to cover the targeted area and we will need to attach a camera on the vehicle so that the person using the device can utilize the device from a remote location without needing the device to be in sight.
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