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The rise of the robot farmer

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#181

Post by thelasthuman »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #114
anigbrowl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But pure capital allocation efficiency isn't a good indicator of social well being, just as infinite sugar sounds momentarily delightful until you think about diabetes.

That's kind of irrelevant to my comment, unless you consider workers part of the "capital" that is being allocated efficiently. Even if you do, allocating capital (and workers) efficiently usually eventually leads to better social well being than allocating it inefficiently. (Perhaps reversing the inequality makes the historical examples more obvious: allocating capital and workers inefficiently leads to worse outcom…

Efficient how? Finding the leader of the grand "race to the bottom" and moving the work there?

Maybe the workers should be as free as capital in seeking a country that benefits them the most. Then it'd be a race to the top because people can just leave your abusive country for a place that sees them as human beings.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#182

Post by Jedd »

thruflo22 wrote: post #176
Jedd wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but my take on this is efficiency and quality will be superior to a human (or will be very, very soon). Speed of movement / detection / destruction cycle isn't as important as cost per unit of land patrolled - these are things you can easily scale up if the price per device is low enough. Compare & contrast cost of humans.

Right now the dwell time of the laser is slow like in the order of a second per weed. And there can be hundreds of weeds per square metre. So this needs to improve — and there’s lots of good ways to improve it. However, as the parent says, just leave a few bots out there and you easily compete with human operator cost.

Right, but one weed per second is already better than humans if for no other reason it's effectively continuous.

And regular sweeps means you won't be seeing hundreds of weeds per square metre, certainly not once the primary crop's established.

I recall the Bosch weed-stamper robot from a few years ago were pretty happy with ~ 2 weeks per second stomping rate.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#183

Post by thelasthuman »

T4NG wrote: post #10
pwaivers wrote: post #6

> This is the one note of darkness that enters an otherwise optimistic conversation. “This technology could be used in a completely different way,” he says. “You could have entire states in America with no people in them. The potential for what we’re doing to be used in the wrong way is there.” What is inherently wrong or evil about this? If we could automate a state-size farm to feed everyone, isn't that a good thin…

Could mean local community farming hands will suffer from possible job loss and in turn cant make money the way they used to. If people lose those jobs where do they turn, people living in the rural communities do so out of cost or personal preference, so where do the former go if their income disappears? I guess if you picture it more like in the movie Logan where its just a giant corporate run automated farm that d…

> If people lose those jobs where do they turn

Crime, because there won't be a robust safety net to catch them. (In the USA at least) However, there is a robust police state to catch them when they are criminals.

Priorities.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#184

Post by thatcat »

deialtrous wrote: post #165
thatcat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, my mistake, thanks for the link. Total weight is related to pressure through the formula: P = F/A. Weight is F.

Not when you are using pneumatic tires. That gives you the pressure applied to the air in the tire, not to the ground. The tire pressure determines ground pressure.

Lowering tire pressure widens the base of the tire, changing the contact area(A) and adds some shock absorbing. The fundamental equation still applies to static conditions.

Figure 3 on page 279 explains it. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224830979_Ecoeffici...

The reason I thought 1000 psi was low is explained on 278, the ground bearing capacity columns minimum value is 20 mpa or 2900 psi. The numbers in your link are dynamic pressures at depths of 14 / 28 inches. The area where the force is applied increases as the stress is distributed in the soil. The 2900 is a surface value.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#185

Post by deialtrous »

thatcat wrote: post #184
deialtrous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when you are using pneumatic tires. That gives you the pressure applied to the air in the tire, not to the ground. The tire pressure determines ground pressure.

Lowering tire pressure widens the base of the tire, changing the contact area(A) and adds some shock absorbing. The fundamental equation still applies to static conditions. Figure 3 on page 279 explains it. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224830979_Ecoeffici... The reason I thought 1000 psi was low is explained on 278, the ground bearing capacity columns minimum value is 20 mpa or 2900 psi. The numbers in yo…

No. Air is a fluid. Like all fluids, it exerts pressure equally in all directions. A pneumatic tire is not simply a shock absorber, nor does it need to deform for its internal pressure to change the ground pressure. It is transferring force to the entire tire that would be transferred to the ground if you used a solid wheel to contact the ground. You are applying X pounds of force to Y volume of air, which is distributing that force across the entire internal surface area of the tire. It is not the contact area of the tire to the ground that has force exerted on it, it is the surface area of the interior of the tire. This is not hypothetical, measure the ground pressure, change the tire pressure and measure again. It is trivial to verify for yourself.

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#186

Post by thruflo22 »

Jedd wrote: post #182
thruflo22 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now the dwell time of the laser is slow like in the order of a second per weed. And there can be hundreds of weeds per square metre. So this needs to improve — and there’s lots of good ways to improve it. However, as the parent says, just leave a few bots out there and you easily compete with human operator cost.

Right, but one weed per second is already better than humans if for no other reason it's effectively continuous. And regular sweeps means you won't be seeing hundreds of weeds per square metre, certainly not once the primary crop's established. I recall the Bosch weed-stamper robot from a few years ago were pretty happy with ~ 2 weeks per second stomping rate.

/me nods

Re: The rise of the robot farmer

#187

Post by thatcat »

deialtrous wrote: post #185
thatcat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering tire pressure widens the base of the tire, changing the contact area(A) and adds some shock absorbing. The fundamental equation still applies to static conditions. Figure 3 on page 279 explains it. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224830979_Ecoeffici... The reason I thought 1000 psi was low is explained on 278, the ground bearing capacity columns minimum value is 20 mpa or 2900 psi. The numbers in yo…

No. Air is a fluid. Like all fluids, it exerts pressure equally in all directions. A pneumatic tire is not simply a shock absorber, nor does it need to deform for its internal pressure to change the ground pressure. It is transferring force to the entire tire that would be transferred to the ground if you used a solid wheel to contact the ground. You are applying X pounds of force to Y volume of air, which is distrib…

Thank you very much for the explanation. I'm not really familiar with the empirical methodology or equipment required to measure pressure between two surfaces.
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