 FarmBot Genesis working indoors | |
| Classification | Open source farming project |
|---|---|
| Inventor | Rory Aronson, Rick Carlino, Tim Evers |
| Manufacturer | FarmBot.io |
FarmBot is an open source precision agriculture CNC farming project consisting of a Cartesian coordinate robot farming machine, software and documentation including a farming data repository. [1] [2] The project aims to "Create an open and accessible technology aiding everyone to grow food and to grow food for everyone." [2]
The FarmBot project was started in 2011 by American Rory Aronson whilst studying mechanical engineering at California Polytechnic State University. [3] [4] [5] Aronson attended an elective course in organic agriculture where he learned about a tractor that used machine vision to detect and cover weeds which removed the need for herbicides or manual labour, the tractor cost over US$1 million. [1] [6]
In March 2014 Aronson began working on the project full-time funded by a grant from the Shuttleworth Foundation. [1] Firmware developer Tim Evers and software developer Rick Carlino later joined the project as core developers. Rory Aronson created the company Farmbot.io to provide hardware kits and software services and to serve as a funding source to maintain the open source community. [2]
In 2014 and 2015, FarmBot was entered into the Hackaday Prize, where it became a finalist in 2015. [7] [8] After nine design iterations, the Farmbot Genesis began preorders in July 2016 as the first commercially available version of FarmBot. [6]
The FarmBot Genesis is able to plant over 30 different crops within the same area at the same time and is able to operate indoors, outdoors and in covered areas. [7] It can perform almost all processes prior to harvesting including sowing, mechanical weed control and watering [9] [10] while accounting for factors such as age of the plant and local weather conditions. [3]
FarmBot Genesis is controlled through a web based interface allowing remote access from any location on most internet enabled devices. [11] It uses an online crop database called OpenFarm to create an optimal planting plan based on the size of the adult crop. [9]
The Farmbot Genesis is an open source hardware machine [9] and is designed around reproduce-ability and availability of components, it can be created using common tools and processes. [2] Its electronics stack consists of a Raspberry Pi 3 and Arduino Mega 2560 with a RAMPS 1.4 shield and a camera to record data. [6] [9] [12] The universal tool mount and other tools are 3D printed and are designed to be created with hobby level fused deposition model 3D printers e.g. a RepRap printer. [6] [9] It has two electrical connections and connectors for liquid or gas which are magnetically coupled. [13]
The software for the FarmBot Genesis runs through a web interface allowing the machine to be controlled on most internet enabled devices. All software is available under the MIT license and is available on GitHub. [2]
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
Precision agriculture (PA) is a farming management strategy based on observing, measuring and responding to temporal and spatial variability to improve agricultural production sustainability. It is used in both crop and livestock production. Precision agriculture often employs technologies to automate agricultural operations, improving their diagnosis, decision-making or performing. The goal of precision agriculture research is to define a decision support system for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources.
Open-source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.
Arduino is an Italian open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under a CC BY-SA license, while the software is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially from the official website or through authorized distributors.
An agricultural robot is a robot deployed for agricultural purposes. The main area of application of robots in agriculture today is at the harvesting stage. Emerging applications of robots or drones in agriculture include weed control, cloud seeding, planting seeds, harvesting, environmental monitoring and soil analysis. According to Verified Market Research, the agricultural robots market is expected to reach $11.58 billion by 2025.
Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they tow or operate. Diverse arrays of equipment are used in both organic and nonorganic farming. Especially since the advent of mechanised agriculture, agricultural machinery is an indispensable part of how the world is fed. Agricultural machinery can be regarded as part of wider agricultural automation technologies, which includes the more advanced digital equipment and robotics. While agricultural robots have the potential to automate the three key steps involved in any agricultural operation, conventional motorized machinery is used principally to automate only the performing step where diagnosis and decision-making are conducted by humans based on observations and experience.
Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer is an open-source rapid-prototyping standard for building small electronic devices using the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio/Visual C# Express.
Intel Galileo is the first in a line of Arduino-certified development boards based on Intel x86 architecture and is designed for the maker and education communities. Intel released two versions of Galileo, referred to as Gen 1 and Gen 2. These development boards are sometimes called "Breakout boards".
Salvius is an open source humanoid robot built in the United States in 2008, the first of its kind. Its name is derived from the word 'salvaged', being constructed with an emphasis on using recycled components and materials to reduce the costs of designing and construction. The robot is designed to be able to perform a wide range of tasks due to its humanoid body structure planning. The primary goal for the Salvius project is to create a robot that can function dynamically in a domestic environment.
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The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi microchip, with built-in TCP/IP networking software, and microcontroller capability, produced by Espressif Systems in Shanghai, China.
Agricultural technology or agrotechnology is the use of technology in agriculture, horticulture, and aquaculture with the aim of improving yield, efficiency, and profitability. Agricultural technology can be products, services or applications derived from agriculture that improve various input/output processes.
Maslow CNC is an open-source CNC router project. It is the only commercially available vertical CNC router and is notable for its low cost of US$500.
XOD is a visual programming language for microcontrollers, started in 2016. As a supported platform, XOD started with Arduino boards compatibility and Raspberry Pi. It is free and open-source software released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.0.
Marlin is open source firmware originally designed for RepRap project FDM 3D printers using the Arduino platform.
Digital agriculture, sometimes known as smart farming or e-agriculture, is tools that digitally collect, store, analyze, and share electronic data and/or information in agriculture. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has described the digitalization process of agriculture as the digital agricultural revolution. Other definitions, such as those from the United Nations Project Breakthrough, Cornell University, and Purdue University, also emphasize the role of digital technology in the optimization of food systems.
A software bot is a type of software agent in the service of software project management and software engineering. A software bot has an identity and potentially personified aspects in order to serve their stakeholders. Software bots often compose software services and provide an alternative user interface, which is sometimes, but not necessarily conversational.
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