Since Cityblooms’ microfarms have a variety of environmental control options, users can grow effectively in a range of climates. They can control irrigation, humidity and plant nutrition allowing for more efficient food growth than the typical community garden. ![]() Would-be urban farmers can purchase any combination of microfarms, connect the hydroponic units to the cloud and track the growth of their crops remotely. So we can size a farming installation appropriately to the demands and consumption patterns and profiles of the community that the farm is built to serve.” Nick Halmos, CEO of Cityblooms says it’s this flexibility which gives the design its advantage: “The modularity gives us the ability to scale very easily. The smart mini-farms weigh only 15-17 pounds per square foot - minimizing potential problems with roof support - and each unit are designed to fit around any other infrastructure already in place on the roof. Now, California based Cityblooms has created a modular lightweight greenhouse especially designed for urban rooftops. Elsewhere, the Japanese Agri-Cube fits into a standard parking space and can produce 10,000 vegetables a year. We have already seen SEALEAF - which enables coastal cities to create local farms on their seafronts. ![]() ![]() It is no surprise then, that numerous companies are developing alternatives to the traditional rural farming infrastructure - creating small “farms” which can flourish in urban spaces. "GrowBot" brings together researchers from the fields of robotics, botany, mathematics, materials science and computer science from theUniversity of Freiburg (Freiburg, Germany), HZG- Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Zentrum Für Material- und Küstenforschung (Teltow, Germany), IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Pontedera, Italy), SSSA- Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Pontedera, Italy), GSSI - Gran Sasso Science Institute (L'Aquila, Italy), Linari Engineering Srl (Pisa, Italy), Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel), CNRS-Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique (Montpellier, France) and Arkyne Technologies SL (Barcelona, Spain).The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and farms will need to produce 70 percent more food than they do today in order to feed that number. Nicholas Rowe from the Institute of Botany and Bioinformatics of Plant Architecture (Botanique et bioinformatique de l'architecture des plantes, UMR - AMAP) in Montpellier, France, on the investigations on climbing plants that are now beginning to provide ideas for a new movement paradigm for "soft robotics." Together, they will analyze and abstract the functional principles of climbing plants in order to advance the development of novel climbing robots. The botanists are working together with Dr. They have already transferred their results into bio-inspired applications. The Freiburg scientists have long been analyzing the stem structure and mechanics of climbing plants and their different attachment systems. The Freiburg subproject from Speck, the head of the Plant Biomechanics Group and director of the Botanic Garden at the University of Freiburg, is funded with approximately 700,000 euros. Thanks to their different anchoring strategies, the plants can attach themselves to different surfaces. ![]() "GrowBot" focuses on transferring the skills of climbers who can find suitable support structures with their climbing stems and orient themselves and move within them. Plantoid, the world's first plant robot inspired by the growth behavior of plant roots and their movements, was created under her leadership in 2012. Barbara Mazzolai, research director at the Micro-Bio Robotics Center of the IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologie) in Pontedera, Italy, coordinates the project. In the future, these robots will be used in urban development, for example, to install sensors or support archaeological investigations.ĭr. Thomas Speck from the University of Freiburg, is the development of robots that climb like plants and adapt to their surrounding environment. The main goal of the research groups involved in "GrowBot," such as the team led by biologist Prof. For the next four years, their research will be funded with around seven million euros by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program line FET (Future and Emerging Technologies). How is it that ivy, Virginia creeper and clematis can climb? How high is their energy consumption? And is it possible to build robots that behave and move like these plants? Scientists from the "GrowBot" project are pursuing answers to these questions.
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