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

TL;DR

MACARONS is an open-source, scalable automation system designed for vertical farming, capable of transporting plant trays efficiently and cost-effectively, with validated build instructions and potential to reduce labor costs.

Contribution

This paper introduces MACARONS, a modular and open hardware automation system specifically designed for vertical farms, with detailed build instructions and validated performance.

Findings

Capable of moving large plant trays at specified speeds

Cost-effective construction at approximately $145 per grow unit

Successfully built and validated according to specifications

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 1060mm x 630mm and 12.5kg at a rate of 100mm/s along the guide rails and 41.7mm/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 144.96USD which equates to 128.85USD/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 1535.50USD. 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.