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FarmBot

FarmBot
FarmBot Genesis.jpg
FarmBot Genesis
Introductory video for the FarmBot Genesis
Classification Open source farming project
Inventor Rory Aronson, Rick Carlino and Tim Evers
Manufacturer FarmBot.io

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.

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.


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