I really like the idea that a massive robot can be certified Organic.
Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
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Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#92Given where ML and CV are today, I'd bet on open source models trained on weeds within 3-5 years. This company can scale, but their unit price is going to plummet. Also, it sounds like they're using cameras, where it's concievable that other future sensors could be more efficient. An iteration of this with higher resolution cameras and small flying drones seems like an intuitive next step. This is a super interesting…
Commodity drown with high powered laser for killing things based on image recognition sounds like sci-fi dystopia.
Just don't step on the field and you won't be mistaken for a rat and be zapped.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#93Having battled weeds in a previous lifetime I can tell you those weeds are far from dead.
Yeah, but if you can do something like roll this over your entire field once a week or every couple of weeks, it won't matter that they're not dead. All you really need is for them to not be able to thrive and outcompete your corn. Starving them of light by cutting off their visible bits periodically will do the job just fine.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#94https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita... When Ford hired workers to deal with the pests, the pests evolved to hide from the workers under the leaves below knee level. I hope this technology also gets applied to pests like the invasive Popillia japonic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_beetle
Put another way, the workers didn't bother to look under the low leaves, so the pests there had a survival advantage, and eventually became predominant.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#95It's all fun and games until the selection pressure evolves weeds that say "human" on their leaves to fool the AI.
I know this is supposed to be a joke, but come on. In what possible world would this ever happen? They're not dragging this over people lying down in a field and I doubt the technology is even made to not target humans because they're never in target range.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#96If they can make it a little bit more robust, there would be a huge market for removing toxic plants. I was just quoted over $1000 to remove poison ivy from a 500 sq ft. wooded area of property. My satisfaction was not guaranteed.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#97There is a reckoning coming when agricultural robots will overtake manual labor. This is going to lead to a giant calamity of agricultural workers, specifically migrant workers, who are suddenly going to be without a job. I love the robots, I think it’s great, but we should be prepared for a human concern that WILL come.
Ag already uses way fewer workers than they did in the past. There are still some migrant workers but not nearly the number that there were 20 - 40 years ago.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#98Robots will eventually kill bugs too.
Once they get small enough, homes will one day have insect-sized robots in the walls preventing termite and other insect infestations. But maybe without lasers.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#99These AI solutions that shoot a laser at weeds or water at a squirrel seem to be pointing a straight line towards AI weaponry, which makes me a little uncomfortable.
Oh, don't worry. This is way behind AI weaponry tech.
Err... that's probably not what you wanted to hear, though.
Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Farming goes from broad selection against pests with chemicals to introducing a massive selection pressure towards biological mimicry and adversarial image attacks.
I wouldn't worry about it too much, for a couple of reasons. First, the evolution of the computational model is simply faster than biological evolution. The computation model is going to be inside biological evolution's (metaphorical) OODA loop. Humans are going to be helping, too, it's not like it's just going to be up to the deep learning algorithms on their own. Second, for most weed plants, they aren't just a cou…
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