Waterbot
Indoor gardening robot
After getting my master’s degree in mechatronics I decided I needed to put my newly acquired skills to the test before jumping into the working world. I've always been fascinated by plants (having spent lots of time in my Japanese grandfather's garden) so after watching countless episodes on John Kohler's phenomenal youtube channel I decided that it was time to start growing my own greens! Because of space limitations and that fact that I will most likely move around a lot in the bay area, I decided to grow indoors under lights and use the traditional soil growing method instead of hydroponics. Waterbot is what I have come up with.
This robot of mine is a remote controlled 600mL water tank with a 2 axis SCARA arm attached to it that dispenses water from the tip of the arm. It rides along an OpenBuilds V-slot extrusion and refuels it's onboard tank via a refueling station which inserts a nozzle into the Waterbot's tank and pumps water (or compost tea!) to top off the robot. Because Waterbot uses a Vegetronix VH400 moisture sensor, it knows when to shut the refueling pump off an not flood my bedroom. This sensor is also used to know how much water each plant is receiving. As of now I am controlling the robot with a PlayStation 3 controller which communicates with Waterbot's onboard Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth but I am working on writing computer vision software to autonomously water all of my plants.
