Life & fun · February 23, 2026
Sowbot – Open-hardware agricultural robot (ROS2, RTK GPS)
Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot designed to close the "prototype gap" that kills most agri-robotics startups and research projects — the 18+ months spent on drivers, networking, safety watchdogs, and UI before you can even start on the thing you actually care about. The hardware is built around a stackable 10×10cm compute module with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs — one for ROS 2 navigation/EKF localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO inference — connected via a single ethernet cable. Centimetre-level positioning via dual RTK GNSS, CAN bus for field comms, and real-time…
In plain words
Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot that provides researchers and startups with pre-built compute, navigation, and vision infrastructure to skip the 18+ months typically spent on drivers, networking, and safety systems. Built around stackable compute modules with dual ARM processors—one for ROS 2 navigation and localization, one for vision inference—it offers centimetre-level positioning via dual RTK GNSS and real-time motor control. All hardware designs and firmware are open-source, and teams can choose between RoSys/Field Friend for rapid iteration or standard ROS for existing ecosystems.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Sowbot is an open-hardware agricultural robot designed to close the "prototype gap" that kills most agri-robotics startups and research projects — the 18+ months spent on drivers, networking, safety watchdogs, and UI before you can even start on the thing you actually care about. The hardware is built around a stackable 10×10cm compute module with two ARM Cortex-A55 SBCs — one for ROS 2 navigation/EKF localisation, one dedicated to vision/YOLO inference — connected via a single ethernet cable. Centimetre-level positioning via dual RTK GNSS, CAN bus for field comms, and real-time motor control via ESP32 running Lizard firmware. Everything — schematics, PCB layouts, firmware — is under open licences. The software stack runs on RoSys/Field Friend (for teams who want fast iteration) or DevKit ROS (for teams already in the ROS ecosystem). The idea is that a lab in one country can reproduce another lab's experiment by sharing a Docker image. Current status: the Open Core brain is largely fabricated, the full-size Sowbot body has a detailed BOM but isn't yet assembled, and we have two smaller dev platforms (Mini and Pico) in various stages of testing. We're a small volunteer team and we're looking for contributors — hardware, ROS, firmware, docs, whatever you can offer. The best place to start is our Discord: https://discord.gg/SvztEBr4KZ — we have a weekly call if you'd prefer to just show up and chat. GitHub: https://github.com/Agroecology-Lab/feldfreund_devkit_ros/tre...
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