University of Illinois students show off Lego-based crop harvester

Believe us when we tell you that we've seen Legos used in ways its creators could have never, ever imagined. Thankfully, a team from the University of Illinois found a way to demonstrate a rather useful (read: not bizarre) technology with everyone's favorite building block. By setting up shop at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Minnesota, students were able to show off an autonomous crop harvesting system that transferred heaps of BBs onto unloaders, which then hurried them away to meet artificial deadlines. The setup was configured using Robolab software, and aside from requiring the creators to dump BBs into the harvester, the entire show was put on sans human interaction. Granted, the idea behind all of this is far from fresh, but there's just something strangely satisfying about putting a stash of spare Legos to work for you.

[Kirat Pandya @ Nov 3rd 2007 12:23PM]

First post from a university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student

[nate @ Nov 3rd 2007 12:48PM]

first post by a random internet user

[Matt @ Nov 3rd 2007 1:14PM]

So... They made a Roomba?

[Dan @ Nov 3rd 2007 2:22PM]

Lemme know when they come up with a Lego fueled device.

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Nov 3rd 2007 2:53PM]

w00tness!!! Go Illini!!!!!!!!!

[Matt @ Nov 3rd 2007 3:02PM]

I-L-L!

[OnB @ Nov 3rd 2007 3:41PM]

I-N-I!

[deozaan+engadget @ Nov 3rd 2007 11:31PM]

I don't think a buried wire would work very well since you have to dig up the ground to plant/harvest the crops in the first place.

Cable and gas companies can't keep people from digging up their lines, I don't think farmers could do a better job.

[cody @ Nov 4th 2007 1:45AM]

ummm..11th comment from a UofI:Springfield on-line student?? does that count??

[nih @ Nov 4th 2007 2:47AM]

Good to see they're not wasting their time in university pretending lego is the same as engineering.

[James @ Nov 4th 2007 8:05PM]

Hey that's my school I-L-L-I-N-I

[iKrolm @ Nov 15th 2007 12:55AM]

Umm, ok...
From the picture it looks like a line has to be down the middle of a feild in order for this to work.

[trevor @ Nov 3rd 2007 9:34PM]

If this is intended for real, non-Lego applications, some sort of a navigation wire could probably be buried easily, unobtrusively, and cheaply.

But Legos, man. Legos!