First Automated Farming Machine Debuts

California-based company FarmBot launched the world’s first fully automated open source technology farming machine. Built on the belief that “a more open food system is a better one,” FarmBot is designed to allow urban farmers to grow a garden to their specifications thanks to an app that allows users to select the layout and contents of their garden within a soil grid and monitor their progress from a variety of devices. The machine comes with three interchangeable attachments—a seed injector, weed killer with camera, and water monitoring unit—that work together to allow for optimum growth, and the user can also opt to tweak the machine to operate on solar power and use rainwater. Since all of the technology is open source, you can build your own using the files provided on the company’s website.