Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by drited » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

fractal618 wrote: post #242

This is awesome, I love that it will reduce the need for pesticides. When I read people talk about how hard it is to find labor I think to myself "Well, maybe if you paid them more it would be easier to find laborers". I worked in manufacturing for a few years and plant managers were often stating the difficulty in finding laborers. I imagine offering higher wages would make it easier to find workers. No? > "It's har…

From the perspective of a farm /plant owner with a commodity product who is trying to compete internationally that's kind of a 'let them eat cake' solution though isn't it (not robotics - a wage hike)? Margins can't be much above the minimum to earn an OK-ish return on capital in such an industry. If that move makes them unprofitable then it's not a viable solution.

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

#252

Post by slt2021 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

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.

agricultural drones run on gasoline and have plenty of energy

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

#253

Post by capitainenemo » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #118

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…

>An iteration of this with higher resolution cameras and small flying drones seems like an intuitive next step. The gimbal alone on your flying drone will cost more than the entire river.

Non-engineer speculation. Seems like drones might have the potential to make it cheaper? What if the laser was tower mounted and the drones just were there as a camera and reflector and to verify clear line of sight? I guess that would only really work well when the plants are small...

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

#254

Post by eloff » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

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.

Drones also have poor flight time to recharging time ratio. Which means you need more of them to get the job done.

Farms are designed to be serviced by farm vehicles. A vehicle makes a lot of sense.

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

#255

Post by repiret » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #136

maxerickson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modest engine powering it is 55 kW.

People who work in pulsed kW laser labs are all sitting here salivating at thought and also horrified at the thought. Salivating because that's a lot of power that you can use for experiments, much more than most laser technicians have ever seen. Horrified because not only are you going to go instantly blind (as usual), but now the rest of your head will smolder too.

55kW at 240V is only 230A. A typical house gets 200A service. It’s a lot of power, but you wouldn’t have to move mountains to get it if you worked at a lab that needed it. It could be had for less than the price of many used cars.

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

#256

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

foofoo55 wrote: post #241

tw04 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't follow what the advantage would be. Putting hours and wear/tear on a $250k tractor that you likely have other uses for in order to cut what? $10k off the price of this for the cummins motor and hydraulics? It would need power generation of some sort, so you'd be doing PTO off the tractor instead to drive a generator. I'd imagine the end result would be more fuel and in the long run more expense.

The advantage with tractor-pulled is lower cost and higher reliability. The propulsion, guidance, and power-supply problem has been dealt with by industry already and is already owned by the farmer. The autonomous weeding machine will undoubtedly have issues with these three functions, which means down-time and cost. The machine would be cheaper if tractor-pulled, and the developers could focus on the problem at hand…

100% agree and that's what my original comment was trying to get at.

I can see selling two models, one autonomous, one three point hitch / PTO. The advantage of the latter is clear to me.

But then the product starts to look a lot less sci-fi, doesn't it? We already have pull-behind weed burners that use propane torches and not lasers. The only "magic" would be in the AI recognition systems (which I have questions about.) Perhaps one could not get investment $$ for it then :-(

Also propane torches seem more efficient to me than converting diesel combustion to electricity to heat energy.

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

#257

Post by mod » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

OnlyOneCannolo wrote: post #170

klausjensen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is expensive in many countries. :)

Farmers already drive sprayers to kill weeds, so it's not like this would add labor costs. Maybe it's more expensive than chemicals, so they needed some other way to be cost-competitive.

That was mentioned in the article. Spraying weeds happens quite quickly. This vehicle maxes at 5mph so presumably hauling it around would take a lot longer.

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

#258

Post by birdman3131 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

hu3 wrote: post #234

esrh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that message implied weed recognition and marking with drones followed by destruction with the cube.

That's my understanding too but what about precision? Both the drone and the ground robot would need milimiter precision geolocation to coordinate otherwise the laser can miss the weed.

No they don't. They need fairly coarse tracking (A few feet or so.) for geolocation as that is only to make sure you end up covering the whole field.

Now for individual weeds you need precise aiming but that's only from a few feet away at max.

The overall geo location boils down to being able to track a row as you go down it and then go to the next row at the other end. The lasers don't care about the geo location at all.

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

#259

Post by munificent » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #211

gdubs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Invasive European blackberries can also draw energy directly from the anger of gardeners vainly attempting to remove them.

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

#260

Post by amelius » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

pkdpic_y9k wrote: post #121

piyh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point, but you havent thought of the *millions of tiny mirrors* they'd obviously be using :)

One mirror mounted on the drone would be enough. And a strong enough laser device at a stationary position. Of course, the challenge would be to hit the mirror and not the drone ...