FARMBOT

SYNOPSIS
 ABSTRACT

The worlds population is growing and with that growth we must produce more food.
Due to the industrial and petrochemical revolutions, the agriculture industry has kept up
in food production, but only by compromising the soil, the environment, our health, and
the food production system itself. The increased production has largely come from
incremental changes in technology and economies of scale, but that trend is reaching a
plateau. Conventional agriculture methods are unsustainable and a paradigm shift is
needed.
INTRODUCTION
FarmBot is an open source precision agriculture CNC farming project consisting of a
cartesean coordinate robot farming machine, software and documentation including a
farming data repository. The project aims to "Create an open and accessible technology
aiding everyone to grow food and to grow food for everyone." FarmBot is an open source
project allowing hardware, software and documentation modifications and additions from
users.

SOLAR OPERATED FARMBOT

HISTORY

The FarmBot project was started in 2011 when Rory Aronson whilst studying
mechanical engineering at California Polytechnic State University.
Aronson attended and 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 $1 million USD.
In September 2013 Aronson published a white paper outlining the goals of the project
to "Grow a community that produces free and open-source hardware plans, software,
data, and documentation enabling everyone to build and operate a farming machine."
The project is a response to the 60% increase food production needed due to the
growth in world population to between 7 - 9 billion by 2050 and the potential of
precision agriculture to reduce the environmental impacts of farming by reducing
water use, energy, transportation, petrochemicals and time required to grow crops.
In March 2014 Aronson began working on the project full-time funded by a grant
from the Shuttleworth Foundation. Firmware developer Tim Evers and software
developer Rick Carlino later joined the project as core developers and the open source
community Farmbot.cc was created to support the development of the project.
In March 2014 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. In 2014 and 2015 FarmBot was entered into the Hackaday Prize
where it became a finalist in 2015. Farmbot.io began preorders of the first
commercially available version of FarmBot, the FarmBot Genesis, the ninth iteration
of the design in July 2016.
FarmBot creators Rick Carlino (left) and Rory Aronson (right) building a FarmBot in
Chicago, Illinois

FARMBOT GENESIS

Capabilities
The FarmBot Genesis is able to plant over 30 different crops including potatoes, peas,
squash, artichokes and chard in an area of 2.9 meters 1.4 meters with a maximum
plant height of 0.5 meters.
It can cultivate a variety of crops within same area at the same time and is able to
operate indoors, outdoors and covered areas.
It is estimated that the FarmBot Genesis produces 25% fewer carbon dioxide
emissions than standard US food production
FarmBot Genesis V0.7 prototype working outside.

FarmBot Genesis V0.6 prototype working indoors.

 A FarmBot placed inside a greenhouse allowing year-round growing.

The Farmbot Genesis can perform almost all processes prior to harvesting including
sowing, mechanical weed control and watering.
It requires electricity, an internet connection and water supply which be provided
using off grid solutions including a water barrel to collect rain and a solar panel and
battery to provide electricity.
The FarmBot Genesis is able to gather data to take into account factors such as age of
the plant and local weather conditions from both local sensors and external data from
the internet.

FarmBot prototype watering for the first time.

TOOLS

The FarmBot Genesis performs different tasks through automatically attaching

different tools to a universal tool mount, including a seed injector, a watering nozzle
and a tool to bury weeds.
The machine is able to weed the planted area using the weed suppressor using a
camera to identify weeds by comparing all plants in the area to the locations of the
planted seeds.

MAIN COMPONENTS OF FARMBOT

SOLAR PANEL
RACK AND PINION
MOTOR
BATTERY
SLIDES
CONCLUSION

After completing the project, conclude that our project is simple in construction and
compact in size for use. Manufacturing of machine is easy and cost of the machine is less.