• Introduction of our team
• Establish deliverables for the next meeting
• Questions:

1. Validation: Advice on how to validate if our solution properly pollinates a plant (simulate mechanical vs. actual plant)
2. Advice on what crop to choose
3. Market analysis (and stats): Is it acceptable to jump between US and Canadian markets and stats or should we try to focus everything on one
4. Discussion about anything else we should be aware of | - Lavender as a potential plant?
   • Farm in Guelph

• Get more information about pollen in general

• Talk to people to get more information

• Think of if a possible solution is just to save bees rather than a solution to replace them

• Revise 380 team contract

  • Primary and secondary responsibilities

• Liked our wide spectrum of skills

• Don’t worry about validation

  • Focus on design experience

• Soln for more types of plants

  • Need to talk to botanists and farmers
  • Figure out the details of how pollination takes place. How does it stick, how do the properties varies between plants. Does the pollen become destroyed. How much pollen is necessary per plant
  • Need to know, weight, shape, size, electronic conductivity, etc.
  • Start at basic part of the process: the pollen
  • Study bees and anatomy
  • Find farmers that have pollinating issues
  • Mechanism of the existing devices
  • Describe the void that we fill

• 10 days to do this: crisp constraints, criteria submitted

• Maybe look into technology to make bees more healthy

• Interesting space: IP issue

  • IP agreement amongst us

• US and Canadian markets/solutions can be interchangeable | | September 26, 2023 | - Contacted a lavender farm owner who uses bees to pollinate

• Recommended that we talk to individuals that provide pollination services

• Talked with one pollination service company, and have another meeting scheduled for next week

• Talked with a professor in the environment department to understand the science behind pollination and the properties of pollen (and is willing to answer more questions later)

• Meeting with a beekeeper hobbyist on Thursday

• Thinking about picking zucchini/cucumber/melon as a crop

• good market, needs insect pollination, good flower

• Questions:

1. When and what is our next deliverable? | - Says that our information gathering is good.

• We need our own consensus
• Butterflies should not be something we look into but we started on the agriculture path so we should keep it.
• We are a little behind
• Need to learn common things about the flowers and pollinating these plants
• Next week: crisp problem description (reference PD21) + constraints & criteria
• Don’t use a decision matrix for the plants. Pick something that we are all interested in
• We will face a ton of problems but he is expecting big things. He thinks that we will shake things up.
• They won’t help us make decisions
• Continue talking to people to gather info. Continue but slow down (1-2 per month)
• 3 concepts

Deliverables for next week:

• Formal problem statement
• Constraints
• Criteria
• 3 concepts | | October 3, 2023 | - Present constraints and criteria
• Present designs | - Change the group name from “Group 47”
• Create a video of the hand pollination process just as proof-of-concept (for end effector)
• Add location and orientation of flowers as data points to add and collect
• A lot of orchards have trees growing horizontally
• 4-bar mechanism would only give a fixed mechanism
• 2-axis table in the IDEAS clinic (can use this as a demo) → low cost & fast solution
• The “CNC arm” can also be called a cartesian robot
• intel Real Sense cameras
• If there’s an idea that requires less accuracy that would be much preferable as 2.5 mm accuracy is super hard to achieve
• Put weights on the criteria, then each group member assigns a score
• Use a morphological chart to decide which are the best combinations
• Presentation order is the same order as the meeting order on Tuesday
• 14-15 on the introduction slides is the rubric for the PDP
• Peer evaluated | | October 31, 2023 | - detailed drawing
• rough cad
• prelim elec considerations
• picked up some parts from MESS
• bought intel realsense camera
• picked up pi from MESS
• rough software flowchart
• git repo ?

Questions:

• How to ensure airflow in electronics in humid environment?
• Jetson Tx1 or Jetson Nano?
• Scale of the project? Does the final result have to be full-scale or can it be smaller as a proof-of-concept?
• Ask about testing the humidity, the flowers, etc | - rubric on FDP will account for 50%, the other 50% is going to be part of a WOW factor
• include aspects of design (see an assembly with parts clearly built in)
• circuit design: spice design with some optimization
• Mockup of key components so that you can prove that it can work (because without the key component)
• 23/25 from PDP
• We got the highest mark wooohoo
• The least strong point was the presentation of the individual design, which made it a little harder to follow the final selection, the slides were excellent however
• We were very formulaic with the presentation
• Don’t necessarily feel like this presentation is a software execution and just robotic
• Professor Bedi encourages us to present at Velocity
• Elements of what we’re trying to achieve that might warrant feedback from the business community Take the decision matrix, take the best two solutions and do a sensitivity analysis sensitivity analysis as in changing some values and see if it changes the result → see which criteria are much more sensitive and have justification for why you gave the score for that criteria
• In 2.5 weeks need:

1. Actuator selection (why this motor, why this torque, how does it connect to forces in device), sensor (why choose this sensor, why this voltage, why this frequency, why the accuracy), PCB (prototype of the PCB showing that it works or just a simulation), mechanical design (why this component, why this material), software (block diagram with I/O, one of the block diagrams show a flow chart)
2. Final report = PDP + FDP content (and expanding on it)

• They strongly advise finishing the final report right after the FDP is due Ideally FD report should be able to be handed over to another group and they should be completely on board with all the decisions and stuff (don’t think too much about length) (just think about documenting everything)

• FDP → pick the most critical component and do a demonstration (video)

• They’re telling us to not worry too much about humidity

• Sharadon nursery (?) has plants that you could potentially use; go visit them and see what we could purchase | | November 7, 2023 | Questions:

• Changed plant from watermelon to lemon plant

• Ask if patent analysis or anything else related to IP is needed

• (maybe not needed to ask this) Considering adding a feature so that the width of the fixture can be reduced based on the width of the planted crops | - If there wasn’t much change then should include that in the report that nothing much changed

• We’re going to focus on the lemon tree that we have, but note that we can adapt it to other plants

• Prof Bedi wants us to check how much pollen coverage we get when comparing the Q-tip to the brush (also makeup brushes that look like a Q-tip but are not a Q-tip)

• Even though we have lemon tree (that just requires shaking the flower), we could still show that we can do the process of collecting pollen is possible

• Considering designing skid steer for the drive (linking the two left and two right wheels) Clearpath husky robots are an example of this being implemented

• Confirmed that the FDP doesn't NOT need to include anything involving IP or patent analysis

• They are tired of us following a structure the whole time so take some freedom to put what makes sense

• The webpage should be a home page with links to other pages with more information | | November 14, 2023 | Question:

• Is it worth creating a small demo of the vertical mechanism?

• Changing the members to 20x20 mm | - Change the driving mechanism for the scissor to be like a jack

• Change the links to have a u-profile (with a hole through the u-profile to connect the links)

• Should be good to change the links to 20x20 cm

• Can add another piece of 80/20 to the section that is where the weight will be (so that you essentially have a shallow triangular truss

• IDEAS clinic will have a mechanism to show how to link the movement in the x-axis

• For the image processing demo for now we can just use an image from our phones instead of using the actual camera

• Ideal lighting and all of those things are allowed since this is just a prototype

• There are going to be a lot more issues in the field (many that we don’t know about at the moment) so there’s no point in worrying about every single one of them

• Don’t worry about stuff that is beyond the criteria (that’s why we needed to make sure to establish clear criteria) | | January 15, 2024 | | Some points of advice/to-dos:

• Write a testing plan for individual subcomponents

• For example, testing the extend and pollination movement and see if the pollen is loading up on the paintbrush

• Make a master task list

• For example, test liner motion, (include how much it should move, what was the results, - Software testing too and seeing what those results are too

• Focus on the tasks that are very likely to come up with issues, don’t just do the stuff that looks fun |