71–80 of 111 posts
I'm a bit disappointed that there's no mention of mini laser cannons strapped to these drones. That would be way cooler, especially at night, and much more environmentally friendly compared to pesticides.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pipe in the field can be damaged during farm operations like field prep, planting and harvesting etc... they also get clogged by dirt and in many jurisdictions you can't send pesticide down a water irrigation pipe for example. For some farms that would also be a lot of pipe to lay. So overall just a really bad idea.
Think plastic pipes that can be laid out/taken out at beginning/end of season. Low tech/cheap being the key element here, same as targeted irrigation, where only a sliver of water goes directly to the roots, only in this case it will be pesticide targeting directly the crop. Drones sounds for me way too expensive.
Why not mention the startup name instead of saying China, which just makes it sound like if the Chinese government is behind it ? Do Chineses newspapers say US phone instead of iPhone ?
For example, people will say things like “Reddit is controlled by China” when in reality Reddit has an investment from Tencent, not China.
This isn't that new, Yamaha has been selling a remotely controlled helicopter specifically made for applying insectcide on crops since 1991[0]. They were even used in aerial robotics research for a bit[1]. Helicopters are particularly nice for spraying crops because you have a nice turbulent downwash that pushes the pesticide onto the crops. [0] https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorsports/pages/precisio... [1] http…
Were they autonomous?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly doubt it. Flight life expectancy for drones must not be great and fixing a drone can use quite a bit of time, depending on what is wrong with it. I say that as someone who worked with drones. They are, honestly, a pain.
Have you worked with large numbers? I feel like industrial scale drone swarms would be much different than the consumer ones we're used to. Even military ones that are individually very valuable.
I kept looking at the many consumer drone startups that kept popping up and promising various abilities, but they were, almost all of them, lacking. Videography and photogrammetry are the few fields where they took off, and that is because there you have a trained individual controlling the drone. I find it hard to find any startups or products where drones with high autonomy are being successful.
Am open to being proved wrong though, I'm always excited to see development in this field.
Don't get too excited. We don't know the full story on the 2% that lived. For all we know, they could become tomorrow's 20% that developed pesticide resistance and rampaged through China's countryside.
This isn't that new, Yamaha has been selling a remotely controlled helicopter specifically made for applying insectcide on crops since 1991[0]. They were even used in aerial robotics research for a bit[1]. Helicopters are particularly nice for spraying crops because you have a nice turbulent downwash that pushes the pesticide onto the crops. [0] https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorsports/pages/precisio... [1] http…
Were they autonomous?
Add a laser scanning system and direct the system to fly into a building... from flights back around 2006-ish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skdh4Nwm6r4
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess most people just know best about what pests affect their area. Here in France, phylloxera is well known for having decimated our vines after having arrived from America (what saved the French wine industry was grafting our species on the roots of phylloxera-resistant but unpalatable American vines). Same for the Argentinian ants that have founded the supercolony along the Mediterranean coast.
Also a disease of plane trees introduced in France/Europe from the US (WWII, I believe) Here in the UK we also have a problem with american squirrels.
Don't get too excited. We don't know the full story on the 2% that lived. For all we know, they could become tomorrow's 20% that developed pesticide resistance and rampaged through China's countryside.
That was exactly my thought. It's like DDT on Mosquitoes. The ones that survived were resistant, so when they bred, all their offspring were resistant. Could end up being the same issue here, so this could easily become a FAR FAR worse issue in the next generation or two of these worms.
The lab helped inform the city's strategy for fighting mosquitos, which was to rotate pesticides. I believe they also bred and released neutered mosquitos.