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Those pictures show where we are trying to go with it for version 1.0. Do you think we need 4WD in those types of settings from the images? We are looking at 300 pounds of capacity, 2WD drive with a rear caster, 15 miles of range, autonomous without any beacons/infrastructure etc., and around an $8K price through a dealer. On paper this would be about a 2 year payback in many berry operations (and much shorter if labor goes towards 15-20 bucks an hour which we hear guys are actually paying today to keep people harvesting).
In a crop like blueberries, a single picker can pick 20 pounds / hour. 300 pounds of capacity is thus 15 man hours of picking. If we go much larger the product becomes much more expensive and needs to run enough to support perhaps 20-30 guys picking. This is why we have settled towards the 300 pound weight capacity for version 1.0. Does that make the rationale sound more logical?
Thanks for the feedback.
Your best bet for being able to sell these things, is to make it as widely diversified as possible. Instead of thinking about having it only run down perfectly straight rows, with perfectly level ground, and no debris, roots, rocks, holes, sand patches, legos bricks, whatever, you need to make this thing adaptable to irregular terrain and conditions. Else wise you will be excluding a sizable percentage of your potential "market" for this product. Your potential buyer needs to feel confident that not only with this thing navigate THEIR existing terrain conditions, but that it will be able to do so while fully laden (and even a bit over loaded, because these things happen).
I have serious doubts that taking that one center caster, and replacing it with a caster at each back corner, is going to skid your entire production future into the ditch.
But what it will do, is allow a potential customer to see that maybe, just maybe this machine will survive operating on their specific site, in their specific environmental conditions. As another poster (or more, long thread) has said, 4 legs, or in this case 4 wheels, is always, always more stable than 3. Especially with something that is going to be carrying weight around. And sometimes that weight will not be evenly distributed, or it will be stacked high enough to raise the center of gravity. Experience teaches us these stability "lessons" in life, and sometimes it does so the hard way.
I see a whole patch of potential customers taking one look at this thing, with it's 3 wheel (one being a much smaller caster swivel) arrangement, and just saying "Nope", and moving on. I have to ask, why are you so determined that you MUST have this one centered caster on this machine?
4 wheels, one at each corner, all 4 the same size. Make the 2 on one end swivel casters if you want, and the other end has the drive wheels. Fine. I'm not saying that each wheel MUST be motor driven (4 wheel drive), but you NEED a full size wheel at each corner. I do think a true 4 wheel drive unit will be more widespread in popularity. Also a full track model might actually be better and cheaper (than 4 wheel drive), as you don't have to sort out steering for 4 wheel drive, and can still drive it with only 2 drive wheels.
