I am intrigued by this project because I have been taking care of a large garden for my church largely by myself. And during the years that I have been doing this I have dreamed about garden robots that would help me get the work done with less effort. I am wondering if anyone knowledgeable would answer a few questions that I have.
On weeding: How does farmbot know what is a weed and what is not? Is it simply because it knows where it planted the seeds and anything green outside those locations is by definition “a weed” e.g. not supposed to be there? Or do you make use of Artificial Intelligence and have a weed recognition database?
The CNC idea seems like it works well for a small space, but I question how well it scales to larger spaces. Our garden for example is an enclosed 40 ft by 90 ft area. We have 12 4 ft by 10 ft raised beds and three large ground level beds. My original vision of a garden robot was a mobile device with wheels that could track between rows I suppose that you would sacrifice some accuracy in planting, but that would be offset by flexibility. I also envisioned multiple robot arms that can approach the plant from different directions. Weeds don’t cooperate and grow sometimes very close to the plants themselves. A single axis robot arm would damage the plants while trying to get at the weeds. And forget options for a future picking operation.
Have you thought about a function for combating insects? There are all sorts of insects that can do damage to vegetable plants. They are sometimes hard to find. Even with our organic garden we have to use sprays. Some sprays use capsacin, the stuff that makes peppers hot. There is another spray called neem oil which is simply a substance the aroma of which repels bugs. Some mechanism for spraying plants with this protective substances would be a good idea. You would have to be able to get under leaves as well.