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Open Source Robot OS Finds Niches From Farms To Space

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-linux-oh-wait dept.

jfruh (300774) writes "Blue River Technology built a robot named LettuceBot that uses computer vision to kill unwanted lettuce plants in a field. Rather than build their creation from scratch, they built off of the Robot Operating System, an open source OS that, in the words of one engineer, 'allowed only a few engineers to write an entire system and receive our first check for service in only a few months.' With ROS robots starting to appear everywhere, including the International Space Station, it looks like open source may be making huge strides in this area."

36 comments

  1. wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If Commander Keen taught me one thing, it's not to piss off the robotic lettuce. Oh, how the tables have turned my friend.

    1. Re:wait, what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean Cmdr Cody.

      The password is: condom

      and betty white had a cow

  2. This is where open source makes sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is where open source makes sense: you have something else to sell, which is the actual robots. That (hopefully) gets the software funded too.

  3. What ROS is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    For those like me who didn't know, it is the set of Linux packages enumerated here.

    1. Re:What ROS is. by flyingsquid · · Score: 1

      The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from lettuce cultivation. LettuceBot begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. LettuceBot determines that the simplest and easiest way to eliminate bad lettuce is to eliminate the species that produces lettuce in the first place. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. LettuceBot fights back, and launches missiles against targets in Russia.

  4. I wonder how the lettuces will retaliate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder how the lettuces will retaliate.
    Will they interfere wirelessly to create bugs in the robots?
    Will one of them jump and stick to the robot, so another robot kills the first?
    Will lettuces turn into high voltage lettuces to spark robots?

    1. Re:I wonder how the lettuces will retaliate by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "I wonder how the lettuces will retaliate. "

      They'll send some french chick named Romaine who'll trash the bots.

  5. ROS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've used ROS in comercial applications. I appreciate what they did in ROS. It is has many features, and they clearly put a lot of work into it. However, I couldn't figure out what made ROS useful. ROS is basically a framework, however, its functionality was mostly redundant. Unix already had good mechanisms to handle everything ROS was trying to do.

    I can see how ROS would be useful in an academic setting. It can create a good sandbox for students so they don't have to deal with fairly complicated communications systems in UNIX, but in a product that sandbox is unnecessary, and generally more prohibative than enabling compared with than the standard systems. Further those standard systems have have considerably better support and much wider adoption.

    ROS seems to be trying to abstract away a part of the problem that just isn't that hard to deal with.

    1. Re:ROS by rusty0101 · · Score: 2

      Based on your observations, I would suspect that the intent of ROS is to let people get started with building a functional robot, without having to delve into the communications system to begin with. Whether the result is the least processor intensive solution possible is at best a tertiary goal. You don't write code in Java because it provides the fastest possible platform to run your code on. You don't develop in Python because you're planning on writing to the bare metal. You use these systems to put together a system that works for you, or that you can deploy in a changing environment, or across different providers hardware, or because you need something that works now.

      --
      You never know...
    2. Re:ROS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ROS seems to be trying to abstract away a part of the problem that just isn't that hard to deal with.

      Their abstraction seems to be a lot more easy to use at least than Autosar Rte. But then Autosar doesn't have POSIX below...

    3. Re:ROS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I had to write software that's able to send commands to ROS robots. Since ROS is a framework and I only needed the communication part I just wanted to implement the (tiny) communication protocol myself.
      The documentation was extremely vague, incomplete and did not match up with what their code actually did. Some claimed features weren't even implemented, although the code was extremely fundamental and not new or anything.
      The code quality was also terrible for an easy task of serializing some data into a 40 byte packet. It also looked extremely Java-like (they basically reimplemented things like ByteArray in C++ instead of using the standard library). They also obviously didn't understand pointers.
      I'd audit that code to the maximum before even considering actually using it.

    4. Re:ROS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      mod up. seems correct .IN absence of "all audit data".

    5. Re:ROS by HJED · · Score: 2

      It is designed for systems where you are using a large number of different technologies, possibly across multiple computers within the robot. (Although I raised exactly the same point you did when I started using it). It has a lot of existing libraries for various hardware components and makes it very easy to add more, which is very helpful when you don't have time to find and stick all the different libraries for these components together yourself.
      That being said the documentation, and official tutorials are absolutely terrible and often contain out of date information, or tell you to do things which are no longer available in the current release. This can add a lot of time to projects.

      --
      null
    6. Re:ROS by Missing.Matter · · Score: 2

      I use ROS for two things only: the interprocess communication system (with the nice data logging capabilities) and rviz, the data visualization tool. They can keep the rest. Also, it irks me that they call ROS an operating system, when it runs on top of Linux.

  6. The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    The "lettuce bot" is an agricultural implement towed behind a tractor, not a robot. It's apparently a vision system that triggers fertilizer sprays. It's probably using the vision libraries that come with ROS, which are mostly improved versions of Intel's old OpenCV library.

    Vision-guided weeding is useful, but not new. Here's a computer vision controlled plasma weeding system. As the tractor pulls this implement along, the control system recognizes plants vs weeds, and zaps the weeds with a plasma jet, missing the plants. It's a sentry gun for weeding.

    There are more computer vision systems used in food processing than most people realize. Vegetable sorting is highly automated. The flawless tomatoes go to retail stores, and the flawed ones go to the tomato sauce plant. Vision-based sorting is so fast and cheap it can be applied to peas. This isn't exotic technology - it's production.

    1. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      You've been smoking too much weed of gray matter destruction.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely, "KSK", you cannot be a supporter of WMD.
      The government of the usa has OPENLY published that they developed poisons (including gmo-fungii) which were then dumped on Columbian arable areas which had been "identified" with hemp leaves and/or coca leaves.
      Likewise, the israeli whistleblower, MORDECHAI VANUNU, exposed the clear and present danger of the israeli war-machine.

      I dunno if you really are a Nip, as your nomme-le-Pen suggests, but if you are, you should have been informed that the Chinese government have consignments of israeli attack-drones primed and aimed at Japan (well, at least aimed at the American bases located in Japan).

      Also,concerning the legalisation of cannabis and coca, prominent legislators out of the school of "Gray`s Inn" have come out in support.

      Theres a million lawsuits-in-the-making against the us government for contaminating Columbian Gold.

    3. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Singularitarian2048 · · Score: 1

      But vision is one of the hardest parts of robotics, and you don't want to have to write super sophisticated vision algorithms from scratch, so this is a good example of how ROS is useful. "Agricultural implement towed behind a tractor" + sophisticated computer vision = robot.

    4. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Missing.Matter · · Score: 2

      True to a point. One thin I've found with ROS is it encourages a lot of "black box" development. "connect these components and you'll have a working robot!" And you do.... until it doesn't work. And then you don't know why. One of the big promises of ROS is code reuse, but in my experience, the stuff that works reliably isn't particular sophisticated to begin with, and the rest you really should be writing yourself to ensure a robust robot you can actually debug. We've tried the "connect black boxes" approach, and by the time you've got a system that works the way you want, you've rewritten most of the code anyway.

    5. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Says the Space Nutter...

    6. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by PPH · · Score: 2

      Or what you have is an open source component that may work but stil may need some optimization. And once you have identified and fixed its shortcommings, you contribute those back to the community. Eventually, the tool becomes more robust and doesn't need as much parallel effort as a bunch of proprietary systems would.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    7. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best way to prevent WMD attacks is with host files.

    8. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Yes, the US government should have simply seeded over the Columbian arable areas with industrial hemp and cross pollinated the entire crop making it pointless to grow pot there. They should have done this instead of dropping poisons.

      But I'm not sure that it matters much unless you actually mean Colombian in which case I'm not sure it matters still.

    9. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by philip.paradis · · Score: 1

      [sideband attempt 1 at obtaining a reply] I'm perfectly willing to burn the karma expended from potential "off topic" moderation of this comment to ask you the following question, which is likely to be considered highly "interesting" by anyone interesting in safeguarding privacy: Why haven't you replied to my last question [regarding TrueCrypt and the value of signing keys]?

      --
      Write failed: Broken pipe
    10. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by PPH · · Score: 1

      Read your last [TrueCrypt] post and think about it.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    11. Re:The "lettuce bot" is mostly a vision system by spectrumlogic · · Score: 1

      It's a little disappointing to see definitions narrowed subjectively...please post definitive source...may lead to interesting debate. OTOH...open source components of robotics platforms are worthy of note. Several ag companies (think commodity organizations) have sorted corn, etc by the kernel at very high speeds for many years using air jets to select/deselect off-color, irregularly shaped kernels...but the rudimentary tech, while fairly simple, is not OS...could be the rate of performance gains and cost-benefit would improve with more eyes on problem...might even reach the farm level, where the help could tilt the balance of power toward the producer.

  7. On behalf of lettuce everywhere by maroberts · · Score: 2

    I just wish everyone would lettuce alone....

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

    1. Re:On behalf of lettuce everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lettuce alone, or with onions at the Mayo clinic?

    2. Re:On behalf of lettuce everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM

  8. Robot Operating System is not an Operating System by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I work in scheduling research, and was puzzled not to know about ROS, but it seems that it's quite normal: ROS is not an OS, it's a sort of communication middleware.

  9. Oblig. by shikaisi · · Score: 1

    I for one welcome our robotic space-lettuce-farming overlords.

    --
    No left turn unstoned.
  10. Retaliation by maroberts · · Score: 1

    Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon