Open Source Gardening Robot 'FarmBot' Raises $560,000

Slashdot reader Paul Fernhout writes: FarmBot is an open-source gantry-crane-style outdoor robot for tending a garden bed. The project is crowdfunding a first production run and has raised US$561,486 of their US$100,000 goal -- with one day left to go... The onboard control system is based around a Raspberry Pi 3 computer and an Arduino Mega 2560 Microcontroller. Many of the parts are 3D printable.
Two years ago Slashdot covered the genesis of this project, describing its goal as simply "to increase food production by automating as much of it as possible."

Comments

FarmBot

[93 Escort Wagon]

FarmBot... For Gardeners Too Lazy To Garden (TM)

Re:FarmBot

[caseih]

Not at all. The ideas behind farmbot include precision planting, precision watering, and the ability to more easily weed since you know exactly where the plants are. All of these things are increasingly important in agriculture. why are they important? Well precision planting allows mechanical weed control, and it also means water need not be wasted where there is no plant planted. Think of it as drip irrigation without the hoses and a lot more precise.

When it comes to precision planting, that's actually possible on a large scale right now, almost to the same precision the farmbot can do. I've seen 40' wide corn planters that can place a seed to within an inch of the same spot year after year (if that's what you really wanted to do). Rows of corn are perfectly spaced so that the plants are exactly the same distance apart. Automatic section control means there is absolutely no overlap even when driving back across already-planted soil. It's pretty remarkable!

The farmbot idea is very interesting and I'm following it as it progresses. At present I cannot see it scaling beyond small garden plots. And even if you just scale it by putting in lots of small plots, there is an energy cost there to running these robots. There's an energy cost to conventional farming of course, but the carbon cost of mechanically removing all the weeds at a large scale is often far more than using herbicide.

That said, the farmbot is very cool and I think it will turn out to be really productive for some kinds of food growing, such as your garden. You joke about being too lazy, but the fact is, most people simply don't have time to properly tend a garden so most don't, even those that would kind of like to. This would allow folks to grow their own food. That alone is a good and educational experience to have. I've often thought agriculture (even gardening) and computer nerds are a good fit. Technology really can help us get a little bit back to nature and having our own fresh food from time to time. Of course then people would have to relearn how to cook again.

Re:FarmBot

[mfh]

FarOutBot... 420-blaze-it (Coming Soon to Colorado and other legal-ish places)

Still an early prototype.

[Lumpy]

I have looked at this several times. No way this thing can survive being outside 24/7/365. It's not waterproof where it counts, it needs a whole lot of refinement to make it to an actual 1.0 release device that can last outside through all types of weather for at least 3-4 years. The gantry is not self cleaning or sealed in any way, same for the tracks.

It's a great idea. and a fantastic early beta. but they need some industrial robotics guys to show them how to make it survive weather.

Re:Still an early prototype.

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

A defense against rabbits already exists, it's called an "outdoor cat" lol.

Re:Obligatory

[thinkwaitfast]

I have about a dozen empty cottage cheese containers next to my front door each with a lettuce plant. This is enough to keep me in lettuce all summer and I spent literally zero dollars on the system and maybe five minutes combined over the last three months. This is a high tech solution looking for a problem where none is needed.

Research arm of NASA

[waveclaw]

I hope this thing is happy being fueled by cheap polluting sources and doesn't clog much. Just with clean water the current politics of 3rd world nations makes access to fuel sources difficult. But it could be very useful to roof-top first-world herb gardens and space travel.

One common plan to colonize Mars, the Moon or various science fiction worlds starts with dropping of robots and letting them build the infrastructure. Then all you need to send humans is a fancy taxi with some really good entertainment for the long trip. One problem facing these plans is that the cost estimates. One NASA plan to research, develop and implement the robotic parts of a farm on the Moon has a literal Moon-shot price.

Yet here we are in the age of Kickstarter and Indiegogo funding where the key parts of a space colony are being invented one piece at a time.

Let's just hope that nobody decides to take the money and go build a house with it instead. That would be just Peachy.

Yes, but

[penguinoid]

Can it farm raspberries? And can it bake pies?

Re:Yes, but

[Proudrooster]

I grow and harvest raspberries and constantly think, is there anyway I could teach a robot to do this and sadly the answer is no. Tomatoes maybe, but raspberries are a literary a pain as they try and stab you while you pick them with their little barbs. They are also hard to find and ripen over the course of weeks. Then they are very delicate. If you squeeze to hard, squish. If you shake the plant, many will fall off. If you try to pick on that isn't ripe you will tear off the branch.

If someone has a Raspberry gardening robot, please let me know!!!!

Re:Yes, but

[dan42]

Oxbo raspberry harvester

this will pick an entire field... certainly smaller options exist, but i doubt the ROI would be worth it - much like this gardening bot...

What does it do most of the time?

[starless]

If it's not mobile it seems to be very expensive to just plant seeds and water an extremely small area.
The seeds could probably be planted more quickly by hand than the time it takes to program the machine
to do it.
And then using it for watering seems overkill. Even if you want to automate watering I see automated sprinkler
systems available at amazon for a couple of hundred bucks.
So it looks like the machine would spend most of its time just sitting there not doing anything.
I suppose the weeding is somewhat useful. But again it's a very small area.
Or am I missing something obvious?

Re:What does it do most of the time?

[Jeremi]

Or am I missing something obvious?

I don't know if it's obvious, but the missing thing is that this won't be the final word in automation of home agriculture.

I remember back when the first PCs came out, and they were rather ridiculous -- the amount of time it required to get them to do anything useful was such that it would almost certainly be easier to accomplish the same task with pen and paper, or with a typewriter.

But a certain type of person was drawn to them anyway, not because they were immediately useful, but because that person wanted explore what was possible and see how much further the ideas could be taken. And now, 40-some years later, we have inexpensive PCs and cell phones that are much more powerful than any other method, to the extent that most people wouldn't even consider handling most problems the "traditional way" as a realistic approach anymore.

Or, as Ben Franklin put it, you might as well ask, "What good is a newborn baby?"

Re:What does it do most of the time?

[swillden]

This isn't even the first word in farm automation.

It's the first word (or close to it) in small-scale home garden automation. Traditional farm automation is all about scale, enabling fewer people to farm larger areas effectively. This isn't that. This is about enabling lazy/busy people to grow a highly-effective garden in limited space and with limited attention -- and probably limited understanding of how to do it. You don't have to learn how to care for different types of food plants, you can instead rely on software configuration provided by others who do know, and you don't have to go out and work in the garden every day.

'take back the food' whatever that vapid statement means

Yeah, that part is pretty silly.

However, I like homegrown veggies but I'm too lazy to garden. I don't mind planting or harvesting, but the daily regimen of watering and weeding is too tedious for me -- but I do like automation, tinkering and I have disposable income. I could see myself buying one of these.

"3d printed" - does nobody MAKE anything anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can none of these hipsters run a lathe or a milling machine? Can no one measure, or make a part square or plumb?

Re:Obligatory

[93 Escort Wagon]

I like how precisely it plants and waters each seed.

Actually, the way it waters - as well as the way it weeds - makes me think the kid who designed it isn't a gardener.

It appears to be top-watering the plants frequently. Most gardeners know that, if you top water (say with a sprinkler), you want to be careful about both the timing and the frequency - otherwise it's an invitation to all sorts of fungal leaf diseases. If you're interested watering precisely for weed control or water conservation, drip irrigation systems are a much better (and much cheaper!) solution.

It "weeds" by pushing the weeds under the ground. This isn't going to be effective against a lot of pernicious weeds. A gardener probably would have designed the weeding mechanism to use a wire or blade to cut the weed off below the soil line. Additionally, weeds that can be visually identified as such because they're at a distance from the desirable plant aren't as much of a problem as weeds right up next to the plants... and you really don't want this tool shoving those underground and potentially damaging your veggies' roots.

As far as precision sowing goes... If you really care about that, there have been tools available for decades to accomplish exactly this at reasonably low prices.

Re:"3d printed" - does nobody MAKE anything anymor

[ShanghaiBill]

Can none of these hipsters run a lathe or a milling machine?

Why? Because it is supposed to be hard? For most of the parts they are making, 3D printing is superior in every way. Less material, less time, less training, less effort, less waste.

Disclaimer: I know how to run a lathe and CNC milling machine, and have a Sherline in my garage. But I also know how to select the right tool for the job.

Re: mehhhh

[thinkwaitfast]

load it with seeds and water, etc

There's a 'bot for that.

Subjects in Comments are Dumb

[TFlan91]

Obvious question....

Can it grow weed?