FytoBot

Objective (Work Project): Automated harvesting of the worlds most productive plant (Lemna). You need to harvest it every day!

Highlight #1: I owned the decision & implementation of doubling our harvest end effector to more than 2x the speed of the machine, which increased efficiency and accommodated better working hours for onsite operators. You can see in the pictures below we went from having 1 cart & harvesting end effector (left) to having 2 that were mechanically linked together (right). I had to navigate many relevant design considerations when doing this including power, cost & manufacturability.

Highlight #2: I owned the process of how the machine separated the aquatic plants from water. Our harvesting scheme generated a mixed flow of water and plants that required the water be separated and returned to the growing environment while the plants stayed out and fell into a hopper. I performed the entire engineering design process from ideation -> design & testing -> production implementation. The picture below shows one of our FytoBot hoppers filling up with plants (Lemna)

Result: Operational FytoBots across multiple grow sites in California. Tens of thousands of pounds harvested & counting!

Comments: I was involved in almost every aspect of the machine design (mechanical, electrical, software) at different points. These 2 highlights are a very small sample of the contributions I made on this project and am happy to answer any additional questions as long as it's public information.