Open Robotics For Social Farming
A solution by Slowd submitted to Social Farming in the Appennines
A customized technology integrated platform made by open source hardware and software technologies for precision agriculture, co-designed with the distributed social farm community and aimed to enance sustainability and to establish a technology-related, P2P-based skill development practice.
One Page Summary
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Our socio-technological platform brings a system of advanced technologies based on low-cost open source technologies, for accessible, sustainable and sustainable precision agriculture designed on the needs of the community, giving rise to an ecosystem of scalable solutions, developing at the same time in the community itself and in small businesses on the territory, the skills necessary for maintenance and future implementation. Our proposal will become a first prototype and can be easily reproduced on other territories all over the world.
With our platform we want to maintain high productivity and therefore the sustainability of agricultural production by favouring the adoption of natural production methods, making production in the territory resilient to climate change. We intend to make the concept of social farm a permanent tool for territorial development that can progress on its own and by implementing the competences of its members.
We do all this through the use of low-cost open source technologies (electronic platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry, sensor technology, communication, robotics, open-data analysis, 3D printing, etc...).
it is possible to develop technological solutions and products that, if well documented, become easily adaptable to specific contexts as well as simple and economical to maintain. Moreover, the skills on these open systems can be easily transmitted and shared through project documentation management methods, workshops and cyclical training activities for workers (even with disabilities and poor scientific skills), ensuring that the social farm community becomes increasingly independent of external stakeholders, becoming a peer-to-peer learning centre for other local farmers and their members.
We are convinced that it is possible to contain water waste, monitor the state of growth and ripening of products, monitor soil characteristics and identify the most fitting crop mixes for the territory, and thanks to the open-data P2P it is possible to understand how to redefine crops based on climate change, adapting strategies and species using information from the growth of the same on other climate zones, or adopting the most suitable species for the various local microclimate conditions.
pitch: http://vimeo.com/248378198
