Technical development, experimental use, and analysis of open source technologies in agriculture

Stay tuned for Open Source in agriculture - coming soon.

More information here!

Current Projects

Farmbot

The New Production Institute from Helmut Schmidt University in collaboration with the Hamburger Klimaschutzstiftung (Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation), and the FabCity Hamburg Association started a hands-on collaboration project to investigate and test different Open-Source farming solution.

The project is implemented at the educational farm Gut Karlshöhe in the north of Hamburg which is operated by the Klimaschutzstiftung. The aim of the project is to investigate the potential of automated Urban Agriculture in the context of sustainability, resource management and the economic viability of such technologies.

The project consists of testing and evaluating an already existing Open-Source farming robot solution called FarmBot. FarmBot is a 3-axes cartesian motion system, similar to CNC machines, developed by the FarmBot start-up in California, USA.

The FarmBot robot is capable of different tasks such as seeding, weeding, watering, and monitoring. To evaluate the effectiveness of the robot, two identical raised beds were installed. On one bed the robot has been installed and in the other the same plant configuration will be taken care in a manual (more traditional) way.

The reason to use already existing solution is to start exploring the possibilities of automated farming systems without having to invest too much time in developing our own solution from scratch. Nevertheless, by using an Open-Source solutions we have the possibility to try new ideas by modifying, adapting, and developing custom solutions that can easily be integrated into the existing platform. These solutions could range from new hardware tools to new software capabilities for the robot, e.g., Machine Learning vision to detect pests and weeds.

Weeding robot

Development of an autonomous “weeding” robot, that is able to detect weeds autonomously at an early stages, navigates independently in the fields and removes them with a set of tools and therefore reduces the need for herbicides significantly. More information can be found here https://ecoterrabot.com/#about.

Vertical Farming

Presentation of two prototypes (1x Indoor Version, 1x Outdoor Version). We designed, built and documented the prototypes. Both types will be used for display. Goal: Awareness for open source hardware/ small-scale technological solution for the agriculture