SAASbot(Scalable Autonomous Agronomical Smart Bot) is a robotic platform developed by the undergraduates of University of Moratuwa. It has the capability to perform various task related to personal-to-medium scaled farming. It provides functionalities such as planting seeds, watering and fertilizing, surveillance, automatic weed elimination with the added unique feature of scalability. The SAASbot can be used in a farming field of any size or shape, making it superior to all the presently available commercial robots for personal to medium scale farming. Looking at the sales data of currently available personal farming robots in the market, it is evident that SAASbot is capable of securing a huge market share globally, if commercialized.
The whole mechanical system of SAASbot was developed from scratch in Sri Lanka, at a fraction of the cost of existing commercial robots for personal farming. SAASbot system consists of not only the SAASbot mobile farming robot but also a stationary home station and the mobile app. The robot comprises a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) gantry and a mobile platform with Mecanum wheels. The CNC mechanism allows the robot to carry out farming operations within its dimensions and this area is called as a ‘Cell’. The mobile platform allows the robot to move to another cell. The use of the hybrid actuation system of Mecanum wheels and the 3-axis CNC mechanism allows precise and faster end effector movement while facilitating scalability. Additionally the actuation architecture used in SAASbot allows the robot to plant different plants in the same farming field, and treat individual plant separately; a unique feature which is not present in mobile farming robots. The robot has onboard seed, water and fertilizer storages and an onboard rechargeable battery.
The team has also developed a SAASbot mobile app, which provides an easy and powerful interface for the users to control the robot. The mobile app can be used to perform robot functions such as planting seeds, watering, fertilizing and the app can also be used to create custom profiles for each plant type (i.e. the daily water/ fertilizer requirement for a specific plant, crop harvesting time). SAASbot will automatically carry out watering and fertilizing daily, according to the profiles created by the application.