World first automatic field robot | Merixstudio's Product Stories

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Having a huge focus on your customers is one of the key

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things in trying to implement such a radical innovation.

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So the product is essentially an autonomous robot

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that we use

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to map a field.

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The robot then generates a set path around the

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field and it essentially goes around this path and

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seats the seats in very specific location.

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So it basically takes care of this entire process

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that would otherwise contain a lot of manual labor.

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FarmDroid contacted us in autumn two thousand twenty,

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and their goal was to improve the robot's usability and

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increase their value from the end user perspective.

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Firstly, we created an MVP.

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We were strictly limited by the time because we needed to

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finish it before the start of the sewing season.

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So at the very beginning,

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we needed to choose the tech stack that would allow the

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app to scale up quickly.

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Then, a few months after the MVP release,

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the client returned to us with user stories and feedback that

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helped us identify areas for development and design improvements.

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At the beginning,

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the product we got developed for from Merixstudio was a radical

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change to how our users used our product.

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The former product we used was basically a text message system

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where people could message a robot and say start or stop.

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So suddenly going from that to a hugely intuitive

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and visual interface where people could monitor and access

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their robots, it was a radical change.

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And that's why user centricity was at the core of our

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cooperation with FarmDroid.

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Every feature we've implemented was focused on delivering

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additional value to end users, in this case farmers.

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The client provided us with users desires and pain points.

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Additionally, at the beginning of the project,

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we've conducted scoping sessions that helped us dig

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deeper into the farming industry,

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track different user flows,

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and define technical requirements for the software.

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One thing that the term DEXTAC we used was the fact that we

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dealt with an IoT product.

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FarmDroid communicates with the web app via an MQTT protocol.

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With this in mind,

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we made a frontend wrapper that dealt with FarmDroid's hardware

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and used React Hooks for fetching and sending data in real time.

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The developments from here on out will be more incremental.

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So and and it's the same thing we see with our product, like,

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we you reach a point where you have your foundation and

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that foundation bring that in in the first place is a huge change.

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But after that you start building on the foundation so

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you make small but really valuable changes.

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An important feature was integration with Glareapp

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as one of the main values of the app is remote management of

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the robot and path.

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We merged satellite views with Leaflet and PixieJS for drawing

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the field on canvas.

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Users reported that this map module at the MVP stage used

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to crash the app sometimes if it was running for too long.

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We re routed and its performance improved significantly.

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At the MVP stage, we used Next.Js

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and Redux for implementing the admin panel.

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It needed to handle an application for multiple users

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with a foreign access rights.

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At the second step of our cooperation,

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we updated the text app with TypeScript and improved the app

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architecture.

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It made the implementation of the new feature much easier for us.

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When it comes to UX and UI, we focused on coherence.

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Our main use challenge was to add new features without

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changing the current structure of the app and its interaction logic.

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We wanted to improve the user experience of the interface.

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For example, by redesigning the droids detail page, Then,

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we could focus on all the features that were introduced

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into the admin panel.

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New statuses, tabs, filters,

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all of these features were designed with attention to

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consistency across the entire app.

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Thanks to this approach, we minimalize the design depth

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and increased software usability.

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We have no doubts that this is a revolutionary product in the

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farming industry.

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We are glad that FarmDroid chose Merixstudio as a

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partner in its development.