7 ms·

FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine

120 points by gustoffen 13y ago

_mulder_ 13y ago
"If you have another way to donate in mind" Seems like this would be an ideal project for a kickstarter, that way at least the project could create a more informative project page and detail exactly how they hope to spend the money with perhaps the goal of building a prototype in a given time-scale. At the moment it looks a bit too much like someone's had a great idea, done a bit of initial design and thrown together a wiki page. It doesn't seem serious enough for me to donate at this stage.
- gustoffen 13y ago
  It might be too early for a kickstarter, but looks like it hasn't stopped someone from donating pi bitcoins - https://twitter.com/FarmBotProject https://twitter.com/FarmBotProject
- roryaronson 13y ago
  Hi, my name is Rory and I am the one behind the project. We are working towards a crowdfunding launch in 2014 as stated on page 47 of the white paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-Source-Automated-Precision-Farming-Machine http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-... We've received a good amount of donations so far and will be ordering materials for the initial design this week and next. I'm currently recruiting other students at my local university to work on the project, and we plan to flesh out the wiki with timelines, design files, and progress updates soon. Thanks for checking out the project!
  - _mulder_ 13y ago
    Thanks for clearing it up. However, I'm still not sure on what my donations would be used for at this stage (I guess you could say a lack of transparency) but I wish you the best of luck and hope you get enough backers to make this work. Could be something of REAL benefit to the world, which is more than most HN stories can say.
ximeng 13y ago
This strawberry picker was in the news last couple of days: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/26/business/latest-robot-can-pick-strawberry-fields-forever/#.UkRjXIZ9t5Y http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/26/business/latest-...
malandrew 13y ago
Very cool. It would be awesome to automate as much as possible of permaculture and everything you need to create small communities that can survive entirely off the grid in a way that affords people plenty of free time. People who did this might want to also check out the Global Village Construction Set: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...
- timdiggerm 13y ago
  off the grid, yet with a powered robot?
  - Zikes 13y ago
    Plenty of off-grid power options, like solar, wind, and water.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
      And gasoline.
      - Zikes 13y ago
        Yep, that does power plenty of tractors and tills already.
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  I'm reminded of this, my favorite TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.... He talks about turning a de-forested area back into a rain forest. It's like an algorithm for sustainable living.
eksith 13y ago
This seems to work on a very similar principle to automated industrial cutters like those you would in factories slicing fabric or even automated drawing machines or dock cranes. Two tracks on either side with one main gantry and tool in the middle. The design is very simple (which is very good) and I think the principles are straightforward enough for the DIYer to begin tinkering almost immediately. 3D printers, while getting cheaper, aren't as cheap as inkjet printers and until that becomes are reality, making parts will be a bit expensive. But for a small green house version I can see someone using furniture drawer tracks or screen door tracks from the nearest hardware shop and begin building one of their own. Someone with basic woodworking skills can put together a basic version fairly quickly. Arduino programming is also pretty simple that a novice can get working quickly. A motor controller board will really help with a smaller version. I especially like the design for the Crop Circle Bot : http://wiki.farmbot.it/file/detail/Sketch%2C%20FarmBot%20for%20Crop%20Circles%20%2809-20-2013%29.pdf http://wiki.farmbot.it/file/detail/Sketch%2C%20FarmBot%20for...
Qworg 13y ago
I think the follow up circular design is far more efficient. A huge X-Y table is terribly expensive in materials.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  In maintenance, too.
- jabits 13y ago
  I think x-y scalability would be easier/more versatile/easier to locate than an ever-enlarging circumference.
tocomment 13y ago
This is really cool. If these were ever used at scale it could make organic farming cheaper than non. For example instead of pesticides a robot like this could pick off bugs (and or scare them away). It could also pull weeds getting rid of the need for herbicide.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  The design seems fundamentally unscalable due to the rails. I've been to farming areas and fields can go on for miles. They could have come up with something far more powerful just by sticking it on the front of a tractor and having some tanks/bins for consumables. Heck, they could have even started from common irrigation systems where you can have 400m of pipe on wheels you roll across the whole field. I have to wonder how much farmer experience anyone behind this has and if they even looked at current farming equipment before just scaling up a computer printer and sticking a different end on the head.
  - pampa 13y ago
    Dont you see? It's a robot for growing organic weed! Maybe some lettuce on the side. Here is an idea for a startup: Shipping container weed farm. Order one online, plug in, insert seeds, press button.
yellowbkpk 13y ago
Ever since the Telegarden [0] shut down I've had an idea like this in the back of my mind but not solid enough to give it a name or draw plans. I'm glad someone is making it happen! [0] http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/ http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/
keenerd 13y ago
As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is getting there as high-tunnel becomes cheaper to install.) As an aside, mechanical harvesters for grapes are hilarious. You still need people to run them. One person's job is to find and remove possums from the fruit bin before the critter is buried by a thousand pounds of fruit. It is a distraction to talk about the gantry, XY or radial. Any gantry based system is going to be a headache from the start because you've got those rails cluttering up the space. Eventually you'll find something the robot cannot do and then you'll be trying to figure out how to get your general purpose tractor around without crushing the gantry. The radial system is cute, except now your installation and operating costs scale linearly with the amount of crops. With an XY system, one can plant more and extend the rails and have the existing robots do more work. Not possible with the radial system, unless you are going to physically pick up and move the units between circles few times each day. If time is tight (plague of locusts coming in tomorrow, need more robots to squish them) you can increase the robot density by sliding more robots onto the XY gantry. Not possible with radial. Ultimately it will be about the vision processing and manipulators. And then you might as well mount the vision/manipulator unit on a tractor and have a robot-tractor drive up and down the fields, just like any other piece of equipment. Vastly cheaper and more flexible than gantries. Eventually we will get there, but it probably won't be until vision processing and lidar gets a whole lot cheaper. We might be on the cusp though, based on the computer vision advances in video gaming. User roryaronson, I've done a lot with robotics and outdoor electronics too. If you want I can give you a fairly lengthy piece of constructive critism about your whitepaper. You've got a lot of good ideas in there, but just as much misinformation.
- diydsp 13y ago
  Your post is the epitome of how domain-knowledge trumps idealism. I look at this and instantly think "Dirt. And water." Dirt and water will destroy their "machine." Whoever conceived it doesn't respect that farming involves dirt. And water. As you remind us above, THE TRACTOR IS THE ROBOT. The tractor is safe from Dirt and water. Unless this is some desktop thing. Even as a gantry system, their rendering is naive. ISHYGDDT.
Bjorkbat 13y ago
Some input as a former organic farmer: wheels. But a start is a good start, and really wheels can be a hassle, seeing as tractors can't operate on muddy soil (well, shouldn't). I'm actually somewhat glad someone is doing this. I had a similar idea way-back-when, for gardening, but I had no idea how to handle the issue of having the seeder/weeder/watering device climb over taller vegetables, such as tomatoes, which can get up to 4ft tall, or the mighty sweet corn plant, which can get up to 6ft and higher, at least not without making the thing ugly as all hell or severely manhandle the crop. This is an attractive looking step in a good direction. I'll follow you on Facebook and occasionally remark about the hell that is trying to grow vegetables in East Texas.
prawn 13y ago
Half-baked pie in the sky musing: What about a spindly-legged robot (picture those tall things in Half Life, or the killers in War of the Worlds) that wasn't constrained by rails? It used a camera to identify where to safely step, returned to a base to charge (solar on shed roof nearby) or replenish its (small) water and seed supply. Sensors helped it check water moisture and know when to rewater. In its travels, it got a picture of which regions had the most sun, so it knew what would grow best and where. Wonder if it could (with camera or sensor) identify what was growing where to help with decisions, or even remove upcoming weeds before they got established?
Debugreality 13y ago
I'm most interested in pushing this technology forward so we can use it on the moon or on mars. I think the moon would be a much more attractive destination if they had a few nice big gardens growing up there...
smoorman1024 13y ago
Really interesting idea. I could see this being used to remotely manage a farm from anywhere in the world. Picture a dashboard with hookups to your video feeds and statistics. When it's time to harvest take it out of the ground put it in a hopper and wait for pickup. Not to mention the impact of testing different field configurations in varying climates all over the world. Whether the robotic design of the system is cost efficient or not, we should be at least collecting and sharing this data now.
stretchwithme 13y ago
Eventually, robots will be growing all kinds of food. The roofs of our houses will be covered with gardens. They'll even inspect plants at regular intervals and remove bugs. They'll decide when fruit is ready to pick and share all the data with systems that buy, transport and use produce.
weavie 13y ago
I would definitely be interested in some form of 'gardening bot'. This but at a smaller scale just for my garden. At a smaller scale, I can sow the seed myself. I can harvest myself. What I do need automated is the areas where I consistently fail when trying to grow my own vegetable patch. Watering is the main one. Just having a sensor to detect when to switch on and off the hose pipe would probably save most of my crops. Slug control would be another - something to detect when a slug gets to close and zaps em with (preferably) a laser.

120 points by gustoffen 13y ago

"If you have another way to donate in mind" Seems like this would be an ideal project for a kickstarter, that way at least the project could create a more informative project page and detail exactly how they hope to spend the money with perhaps the goal of building a prototype in a given time-scale. At the moment it looks a bit too much like someone's had a great idea, done a bit of initial design and thrown together a wiki page. It doesn't seem serious enough for me to donate at this stage.

gustoffen 13y ago
It might be too early for a kickstarter, but looks like it hasn't stopped someone from donating pi bitcoins - https://twitter.com/FarmBotProject https://twitter.com/FarmBotProject
roryaronson 13y ago
Hi, my name is Rory and I am the one behind the project. We are working towards a crowdfunding launch in 2014 as stated on page 47 of the white paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-Source-Automated-Precision-Farming-Machine http://www.scribd.com/doc/169536137/FarmBot-Humanity-s-Open-... We've received a good amount of donations so far and will be ordering materials for the initial design this week and next. I'm currently recruiting other students at my local university to work on the project, and we plan to flesh out the wiki with timelines, design files, and progress updates soon. Thanks for checking out the project!
- _mulder_ 13y ago
  Thanks for clearing it up. However, I'm still not sure on what my donations would be used for at this stage (I guess you could say a lack of transparency) but I wish you the best of luck and hope you get enough backers to make this work. Could be something of REAL benefit to the world, which is more than most HN stories can say.

ximeng 13y ago

This strawberry picker was in the news last couple of days: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/26/business/latest-robot-can-pick-strawberry-fields-forever/#.UkRjXIZ9t5Y http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/26/business/latest-...

malandrew 13y ago

Very cool. It would be awesome to automate as much as possible of permaculture and everything you need to create small communities that can survive entirely off the grid in a way that affords people plenty of free time. People who did this might want to also check out the Global Village Construction Set: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...

timdiggerm 13y ago
off the grid, yet with a powered robot?
- Zikes 13y ago
  Plenty of off-grid power options, like solar, wind, and water.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
    And gasoline.
    - Zikes 13y ago
      Yep, that does power plenty of tractors and tills already.
VikingCoder 13y ago
I'm reminded of this, my favorite TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html http://www.ted.com/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.... He talks about turning a de-forested area back into a rain forest. It's like an algorithm for sustainable living.

eksith 13y ago

This seems to work on a very similar principle to automated industrial cutters like those you would in factories slicing fabric or even automated drawing machines or dock cranes. Two tracks on either side with one main gantry and tool in the middle. The design is very simple (which is very good) and I think the principles are straightforward enough for the DIYer to begin tinkering almost immediately. 3D printers, while getting cheaper, aren't as cheap as inkjet printers and until that becomes are reality, making parts will be a bit expensive. But for a small green house version I can see someone using furniture drawer tracks or screen door tracks from the nearest hardware shop and begin building one of their own. Someone with basic woodworking skills can put together a basic version fairly quickly. Arduino programming is also pretty simple that a novice can get working quickly. A motor controller board will really help with a smaller version. I especially like the design for the Crop Circle Bot : http://wiki.farmbot.it/file/detail/Sketch%2C%20FarmBot%20for%20Crop%20Circles%20%2809-20-2013%29.pdf http://wiki.farmbot.it/file/detail/Sketch%2C%20FarmBot%20for...

Qworg 13y ago

I think the follow up circular design is far more efficient. A huge X-Y table is terribly expensive in materials.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
In maintenance, too.
jabits 13y ago
I think x-y scalability would be easier/more versatile/easier to locate than an ever-enlarging circumference.

tocomment 13y ago

This is really cool. If these were ever used at scale it could make organic farming cheaper than non. For example instead of pesticides a robot like this could pick off bugs (and or scare them away). It could also pull weeds getting rid of the need for herbicide.

lnanek2 13y ago
The design seems fundamentally unscalable due to the rails. I've been to farming areas and fields can go on for miles. They could have come up with something far more powerful just by sticking it on the front of a tractor and having some tanks/bins for consumables. Heck, they could have even started from common irrigation systems where you can have 400m of pipe on wheels you roll across the whole field. I have to wonder how much farmer experience anyone behind this has and if they even looked at current farming equipment before just scaling up a computer printer and sticking a different end on the head.
- pampa 13y ago
  Dont you see? It's a robot for growing organic weed! Maybe some lettuce on the side. Here is an idea for a startup: Shipping container weed farm. Order one online, plug in, insert seeds, press button.

yellowbkpk 13y ago

Ever since the Telegarden [0] shut down I've had an idea like this in the back of my mind but not solid enough to give it a name or draw plans. I'm glad someone is making it happen! [0] http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/ http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/

keenerd 13y ago

As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is getting there as high-tunnel becomes cheaper to install.) As an aside, mechanical harvesters for grapes are hilarious. You still need people to run them. One person's job is to find and remove possums from the fruit bin before the critter is buried by a thousand pounds of fruit. It is a distraction to talk about the gantry, XY or radial. Any gantry based system is going to be a headache from the start because you've got those rails cluttering up the space. Eventually you'll find something the robot cannot do and then you'll be trying to figure out how to get your general purpose tractor around without crushing the gantry. The radial system is cute, except now your installation and operating costs scale linearly with the amount of crops. With an XY system, one can plant more and extend the rails and have the existing robots do more work. Not possible with the radial system, unless you are going to physically pick up and move the units between circles few times each day. If time is tight (plague of locusts coming in tomorrow, need more robots to squish them) you can increase the robot density by sliding more robots onto the XY gantry. Not possible with radial. Ultimately it will be about the vision processing and manipulators. And then you might as well mount the vision/manipulator unit on a tractor and have a robot-tractor drive up and down the fields, just like any other piece of equipment. Vastly cheaper and more flexible than gantries. Eventually we will get there, but it probably won't be until vision processing and lidar gets a whole lot cheaper. We might be on the cusp though, based on the computer vision advances in video gaming. User roryaronson, I've done a lot with robotics and outdoor electronics too. If you want I can give you a fairly lengthy piece of constructive critism about your whitepaper. You've got a lot of good ideas in there, but just as much misinformation.

diydsp 13y ago
Your post is the epitome of how domain-knowledge trumps idealism. I look at this and instantly think "Dirt. And water." Dirt and water will destroy their "machine." Whoever conceived it doesn't respect that farming involves dirt. And water. As you remind us above, THE TRACTOR IS THE ROBOT. The tractor is safe from Dirt and water. Unless this is some desktop thing. Even as a gantry system, their rendering is naive. ISHYGDDT.

Bjorkbat 13y ago

Some input as a former organic farmer: wheels. But a start is a good start, and really wheels can be a hassle, seeing as tractors can't operate on muddy soil (well, shouldn't). I'm actually somewhat glad someone is doing this. I had a similar idea way-back-when, for gardening, but I had no idea how to handle the issue of having the seeder/weeder/watering device climb over taller vegetables, such as tomatoes, which can get up to 4ft tall, or the mighty sweet corn plant, which can get up to 6ft and higher, at least not without making the thing ugly as all hell or severely manhandle the crop. This is an attractive looking step in a good direction. I'll follow you on Facebook and occasionally remark about the hell that is trying to grow vegetables in East Texas.

prawn 13y ago

Half-baked pie in the sky musing: What about a spindly-legged robot (picture those tall things in Half Life, or the killers in War of the Worlds) that wasn't constrained by rails? It used a camera to identify where to safely step, returned to a base to charge (solar on shed roof nearby) or replenish its (small) water and seed supply. Sensors helped it check water moisture and know when to rewater. In its travels, it got a picture of which regions had the most sun, so it knew what would grow best and where. Wonder if it could (with camera or sensor) identify what was growing where to help with decisions, or even remove upcoming weeds before they got established?

Debugreality 13y ago

I'm most interested in pushing this technology forward so we can use it on the moon or on mars. I think the moon would be a much more attractive destination if they had a few nice big gardens growing up there...

smoorman1024 13y ago

Really interesting idea. I could see this being used to remotely manage a farm from anywhere in the world. Picture a dashboard with hookups to your video feeds and statistics. When it's time to harvest take it out of the ground put it in a hopper and wait for pickup. Not to mention the impact of testing different field configurations in varying climates all over the world. Whether the robotic design of the system is cost efficient or not, we should be at least collecting and sharing this data now.

stretchwithme 13y ago

Eventually, robots will be growing all kinds of food. The roofs of our houses will be covered with gardens. They'll even inspect plants at regular intervals and remove bugs. They'll decide when fruit is ready to pick and share all the data with systems that buy, transport and use produce.

weavie 13y ago

I would definitely be interested in some form of 'gardening bot'. This but at a smaller scale just for my garden. At a smaller scale, I can sow the seed myself. I can harvest myself. What I do need automated is the areas where I consistently fail when trying to grow my own vegetable patch. Watering is the main one. Just having a sensor to detect when to switch on and off the hose pipe would probably save most of my crops. Slug control would be another - something to detect when a slug gets to close and zaps em with (preferably) a laser.