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Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

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Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#211

Post by CoastalCoder »

gdubs wrote: post #183
CoastalCoder wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Question about this tech is, does it really kill weeds, or just defoliate them? Question from a non-farmer: if it were cost-effective to defoliate weeds once per day, would that be good enough? I.e., I would think that totally prevents the weeds from thriving.

It depends on the weed. Overall you’re going to put pressure on it. With conventional fields like the ones pictured in this article, there’s often no ground cover. If you have a ground cover (say, clover) and you’re defoliating the weeds all the time, then you have a chance. But some weeds, like invasive blackberries here in the Pacific Northwest, are extremely resilient and will shrug off defoliation.

Thanks for the info!

> But some weeds, like invasive blackberries here in the Pacific Northwest, are extremely resilient and will shrug off defoliation.

How does that work? I thought all plants (by definition?) need photosynthesis to stay alive in non-dormant states.

Do blackberry plants have some way of getting energy other than photosynthesis in their leaves?

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#212

Post by atat7024 »

riskable wrote: post #147
MayeulC wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you really need AI/CV if you have multispectral or full-spectrum imaging. Different species will have different absorption/emission at multiple wavelength. This makes it easy to identify crops, and seems to be commonly used for aerial imaging[1-3]. That kind of sensor is expensive though, and while you could probably do it for cheap with something like a DLP wheel (edit: or an array of different light e…

> This makes it easy to identify crops ...until they evolve to emit the same spectrum of light as the crops being harvested! Cuz you know that's going to happen.

Eventually, the only organisms that remain will be mutualistic ones, if we do it right.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#213

Post by gbasin »

le-mark wrote: post #113
motohagiography wrote: post #56

Given 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…

It doesn’t need to recognize every possible weed species, just “crop of interest / not crop of interest”. A much simpler but still valuable task.

Hot dog, no hot dog?

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#214

Post by Balgair »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #150
Balgair wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well now you've done it. Why use lasers when we can genetically engineer goats to hate the taste of corn/sorghum/wheat and love the taste of weeds?

That’s honestly a billion dollar idea. Or modify the stalks of those plants to be extremely bitter. Goats already love the taste of weeds and would select for them. Grazing animals would eat the weeds and naturally fertilizer the land. No harm if they don’t totally kill the weed, more food to fatten them up.

It's probably a cheaper idea too, well in terms of development costs. The trade off is that it'll take longer to prove out. Just get a farm and a good enough lab for goat/sheep/chinchilla/etc germ-line modification and prove it out over a few generations. Minus the salary and feed costs, it'll probably be less than the laser itself.

Granted, that's just a billion dollar idea. The multi-billion dollar idea is, as you said, to modify the animal and the plant together. The goats hate some taste in the corn, and the corn produces the taste such that humans cannot taste it. Maybe it'll ripen after harvest and the taste will lessen. I dunno. This way you can double-dip and charge the farmers on the new plant varietals and the goats. Bonus points if you can modify the goats to produce milk that's got vitamin-D in it or something.

I've seen this set-up in Victoria and SA before. The goats eat the grasses/weeds that grow in-between the grapes of vineyards. I've no idea if the goats eat the grapes every once in a while. The wine grapes are pretty sour and bitter to us humans at least.

It would be very 'green' overall.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#215

Post by throwawayboise »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #198
throwawayboise wrote: post #182

I am wondering why carbon dioxide lasers are the choice, and not something like an articulated arm with a monofilament string trimmer (a/k/a weedeater) on the end. Seems simpler, cheaper, easier to maintain?

Generally solid state decides are cheaper to maintain.

s/decides/devices/ ??

I grant solid state is more reliable, but when it fails it's often a replace not repair situation, which could be more expensive.

And the lasers will still have moving parts right? They have to aim themselves at the weeds.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#216

Post by CameronNemo »

SamBam wrote: post #173
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming equipment is typically fuel based. And this appears to be the case for this robot as well: it uses Diesel.

At that point, is this more environmental than applying Round-Up to the field? Each of these lumbering beasts goes 5 MPH, burning diesel the entire time. How many gallons of gas is going to be spent weeding a hundred acres of farmland?

Well they are quite different pollutants. Hard to compare directly.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#217

Post by Arrath »

piyh wrote: post #81
motohagiography wrote: post #56

Given 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…

Drones do not seem like a logical step for me. I'm not a laser expert, but seems like the energy storage needed to kill hundreds to thousands of something with light is heavier than flying would realistically allow. Wheels and tracks are what farming is built around, no need to literally reinvent the wheel here.

I would see the drones being used to help map weed concentration and optimize the route/efficiency of the weed killing robot, not using drones to kill the weeds.

There are already solutions that use drone photogrammetry to map crop health, ground coverage and so on. It feels like a logical next step to use a drone to assist mapping the best route/find problem areas to target for the weed-roomba.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#219

Post by protomyth »

swiley wrote: post #70
motohagiography wrote: post #56

Given 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.

I know a lot of farmers that would respond very well to having "laser weed killer" as a product. I get the feeling the video feed would be amazing. Throw in pest killing and you own the market.

Although I keep thinking the movie Runaway (1984) is going to be a much truer representation of reality than I would like.

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