MACARONS: A Modular and Open-Sourced Automation System for Vertical Farming

Abstract

The Modular Automated Crop Array Online System (MACARONS) is an extensible, scalable, open hardware system for plant transport in automated horticulture systems such as vertical farms. It is specified to move trays of plants up to 1060 mm × 630 mm and 12.5 kg at a rate of 100 mm/s along the guide rails and 41.7 mm/s up the lifts, such as between stations for monitoring and actuating plants. The cost for the construction of one grow unit of MACARONS is 144.96 USD which equates to 128.85 USD/m² of grow area. The designs are released and meets the requirements of CERN-OSH-W, which includes step-by-step graphical build instructions and can be built by a typical technical person in one day at a cost of 1535.50 USD. Integrated tests are included in the build instructions are used to validate against the specifications, and we report on a successful build. Through a simple analysis, we demonstrate that MACARONS can operate at a rate sufficient to automate tray loading/unloading, to reduce labour costs in a vertical farm. <strong>Metadata Overview</strong> Main design files: <a href="https://gitlab.com/owopen-source/macarons" target="_blank">https://gitlab.com/owopen-source/macarons</a>. Target group: commercial growers, researchers and hobbyists interested in vertical farming and robotics. Skills required: general mechanical assembly, drilling, soldering, 3D-printing, laser-cutting, Linux command line. Replication: A first build has been completed and tested, meeting the the specification. A second build using the documentation is in progress.