Now that First Lego League is over, we've got loads more Lego to play with! Time to dig into Old McDoofus's Farm!
Today I attempted to create an Apple Picker for Nature's Bounty. But before I show you what it looks like, let me tell you about a documentary I saw a long long time ago.
The documentary was about the olive industry. I don't necessarily like olives, nor documentaries, so don't ask me why I was watching this or how I remember it - must have been something to do with the machinery side of things. Anyway...
Most plant/produce farming is able to be automated in some way... except olives. The way olives are traditionally picked are:
hire a bunch of humans
beat the olive tree like a rented mule
pick up all the olives that fell off
This documentary was attempting to find a way to automate the olive picking industry with machinery. One of the machines that stood out to me was a massive hoop - massive enough to go around the tree - with a bunch of inward facing sticks. The hoop descents over the tree and beats the tree from all sides, with a net underneath to catch the olives. Then the hoop is lifted and the truck drives on to the next tree.
With that background story, I give you... the Triple Claw!
Yes I know it's pretty janky but that's what prototypes are for.
The theory is: The little fingers are wide enough to get around the tree branches, but narrow enough to pluck the apples. Also, there's a whole bunch of fingers for pluckin', because despite all our team's big talk in the blog, I don't have any faith in our parking precision.
Here's a video test of it working exactly as intended the very first time.
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