FarmBot- A Platform for Backyard Precision Farming: Installation and Initial Experimental Layout.

Peanut Trials on Raised Beds with Indoor and Outdoor FarmBot Setups

“…The project promotes student involvement with production agricultural practices on UMES farms for growing corn, soybean, and wheat utilizing advanced farm machinery and drones to promote sustainable intensification through best practices in the growing area of "precision agriculture" at a somewhat larger scale. Integration of advanced digital agricultural tools such as the FarmBots (http://farmbot.io) for growing specialty crops on small raised beds is also central to the overall scope of the project [1][2][3]. Since its inception, the project has adopted the experiential learning [4] paradigm and involved undergraduate students from engineering and other STEM disciplines on campus to engage with one another in a vertically integrated [5] team setting along with the graduate student (s) in the Food Science Technology (FDST) doctoral program on campus.…”

“…This paper will largely focus on the FarmBot set-ups on campus in both outdoor and indoor settings and recent trials for growing peanuts in these settings. As mentioned earlier, at the university a FarmBot has been installed in an outdoor high tunnel house [3] and a smaller one in an indoor setting with overhead grow lights (see Figures 1a, 1b, 2a, & 2b). FarmBots are computer numerically controlled (CNC) robots developed for smart farming practices at a small scale.…”