Open Source, Farm Bot Genesis

[EdEarl]

 

SingularityHub

 

FarmBot Will Grow Your Food For You; Just Press Go

 

What if you could grow food in your backyard with little to no understanding of gardening? A new robotic system may make this a reality for everybody. Farmbot Genesis is an open source, autonomous farming system that is supposed to fit virtually anyone’s backyard, greenhouse or rooftop.

Farmbot is fashioned after a 3D printer, except its X and Y travel is larger than a typical 3D printer and the print head has been replaced with a manipulator that plants seeds, weeds, and uses various tools to mind your garden. It plants seeds, weeds, tests soil moisture, and waters, which are time consuming activities. It does not manage pests or harvest, so there is room for improvement.

 

Return on Investment is supposed to be 3 to 5 years. I suspect further development will reduce the ROI, and farm and garden automation will become commonplace. However, IMO it needs to be able to harvest produce before its use is widespread; it only does the easy things so far.

Edited August 29, 2016 by EdEarl

[fiveworlds]

I saw that a while ago I thought it was pretty cool at the time. One can imagine a future where cities could grow food underground managed by robots.

[Sensei]

One could make compilation of Gantry crane with plantation of vegetables.

If more farmers would be acustomized with hi-tech, the faster such devices would be build..

Future farmer could be clicking on the screen, telling crane where to move, what action to do in location below it..

Or run script from file..

Whether it should plant vegetable, or remove bugs, or harvest. While sitting in the control room far away.

And just looking at monitor and digital camera.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Sensei

[EdEarl]

I think the cost of a huge gantry to manage a large area would be more than automatically driven tractors. There might be things like farmbots for smaller plots, but eventually I think everything will be mobile robots from nano sized to large tractor sized. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to make this one travel on pneumatic tires instead of tracks on either side of the growing area. Precision could be managed with laser ranging and computer vision using several fixed posts to measure location of the farmbot tool.

 

The importance of this technology is its future potential. It will allow people to grow much of their own food and fiber with little or no knowledge of farming. Additional tools will make family farms practical and help make people self sufficient as AI and robots take our jobs.

Edited August 29, 2016 by EdEarl

[Sensei]

By Gantry crane I meant device moving in one axis on the rails, in say axis "X",

and with "header" moving in axis "Y", and up and down in axis "Z". Similar like 3D printer/plotter works.

with some space between the rails. Distance between rails could be 5m, 10m, 20m. It doesn't matter.

With some predefined "actions" made on vegetables.

The important is how it's controlled and what "header" can do from control room.

It's one time investment. But it needs pretty flat/neutralized ground.

Somebody who finished engineering/robotics could make such device by himself/herself using 3 engines from scrapyard,

for a fraction of price company would build it (as they need to have income and have to pay tax).

 

I think the cost of a huge gantry to manage a large area would be more than automatically driven tractors.

Or one time neutralization of the ground..

To make it pretty flat,

and possible to put rails in the ground, and further crane.

 

Such cranes would allow 3D in vegetable plantation.

Several layers of plants at various height above the ground with hydroponic techniques.

Or even in towers 200m+ height. Each floor separate Gantry crane.

With transparent the all walls and the all floors, so light from the Sun can enter inside.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Sensei

[EdEarl]

Germans, and others, grow grapes on some pretty steep slopes, which would be impractical to level. Corn fields are often a quarter section, and wheat fields are often immense, the largest is 14,160 hectares (54 sections). A section is a mile square. Cranes are impractical for such large fields.

 

The gantry sounds like an ideal solution for vertical farming, especially in buildings.

[Sensei]

EdEarl, I am giving you even +100, you're thinking and going in the right direction, so far,

people should find a way to optimize costs of making food,

and at the same time, making food free of the charge.

Literally free of charge.

Nobody in this world should be dying hungry....

Edited August 29, 2016 by Sensei