Show HN: Sowbot – open-hardware agricultural robot (ROS2, RTK GPS)
7 hours ago
- #agricultural robotics
- #sustainability
- #open hardware
- Mission: Bridge sustainability and scale with lightweight, open robotics for agriculture.
- Sowbot Open AgBot ecosystem aims to close the 'prototype gap' in agricultural robotics.
- Provides Reference Hardware Design for startups and Production-Ready Software Stack for research.
- For startups: Saves ~18 months of R&D on basic robotics 'plumbing'.
- For researchers: Offers stable, repeatable environments via Docker images for shared experiments.
- Open Core 'brain' of the robot is largely fabricated, with some work needed on ESP32 carrier.
- Board A: Control & Safety - Handles ROS 2 navigation, mapping, and emergency stops.
- Board B: Perception & AI - Manages vision tasks like camera drivers and neural network inference.
- Features include native CAN bus support, dual GNSS RTK receivers, and open-license schematics.
- Sowbot body: Modular chassis with high-performance motors, precise control, and rugged suspension.
- Sowbot Mini: 1/4 scale dev platform for testing, needs assembly.
- Sowbot Pico: Dev platform requiring Lizard firmware work but physically tested.