When Carnegie Robotics saw Swift Navigation‘s centimeter-accurate GPS technology, they knew the mashup with their rugged robotics components would lead to great things. Today the two companies are announcing the first of their joint projects, the Duro– a dual frequency RTK GNSS receiver ready to withstand what precision agriculture can throw at it.
“In precision agriculture what customers demand is a rugged enclosure that can be applied outside,” Akshay Bandiwolekar, Product Manager at Swift Navigation told me. “One of the key applications is for vibration and shock– very difficult in the agriculture space. What we ended up coming up with is an enclosure that is based on design principles typically used in the military side of things. As you know, military specifications are very challenging and extra stringent, so we leveraged those in our Duro platform.”
Not only has the product withstood rigorous testing against weather, dust, vibration and other outdoor conditions, it’s also easy to use. “We at Carnegie Robotics, as designers and integrators of ground robots have a lot of experience and background in integrating other people’s products in our systems, and we’ve felt the pain of products that haven’t quite had enough thought in their integration or out of the box experience. That’s where a lot of design time and development time has gone into Duro,” explains Chris Osterwood, CTO at Carnegie Robotics.
Mounting options for tractors and equipment are extensive and the product doesn’t need to be protected. The antenna can be mounted directly to it, and users can have it connected and ready to go with just a few cables.
Another outstanding feature of Duro is its price point. At about $600 Duro hits the sweet spot, Bandiwolekar said, by offering high-end precision, a durable protection system, and opportunity to be used by the mass market.
Listen to my full interview here to learn more: [wpaudio url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/zimmcomm/duro-bandiwolekar-osterwood.mp3″ text=”Interview with Akshay Bandiwolekar and Chris Osterwood, Duro”]