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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

#311

Post by contingencies »

jpollock wrote: post #132

It looks like almost 50% of the plot is taken up by wheel rut? Is that typical?

Yes. Also don't forget 50% of the medium term future yield of the earth is taken up by short term over-exploitation of topsoil, 50% of the medium term water supply is taken up by artificial irrigation of the monoculture, and 50% of the water-holding capacity of the land is removed owing to reduced tree cover. But don't worry, the farmer made 50% more and his children are 50% more likely to not be farmers and to buy 50% worse produce from 50% fewer centralised food megacorps with 50% higher profits owned by 50% less shareholders, under 50% less regulation!

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

#312

Post by mssundaram »

hosh wrote: post #307

This sounds like a much more efficient way to practice monocropping, enhance fragility, and capture economic value by increasing dependence on non-local food sources. In other news: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/pacific-northwest-s-...

That was my thought as well. Thanks for sharing the interesting article

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

#313

Post by myself248 »

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?

Precision aim, versus a spinning trimmer that cuts a whole swath. The inverse kinematics of the system are a lot easier.

Distance. The laser and aiming mirrors can all be up in the body, while the beam reaches the dirty work.

Energy efficiency. It might be that the total energy to bring a motor up to speed and swing the arm at the weed may be greater than a brief zap with a laser, even if the instantaneous power of the laser is much higher.

Certainty. A string trimmer takes a certain amount of nuance to start gently so you don't bog down the string, advance through the weed, and understand when it's done. A laser can just run at a fixed power and scan speed, and almost certainly produce the desired results.

Frickin' lasers. There's PR value to that.

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

#314

Post by myself248 »

OliverJones wrote: post #115

Pow! Take that, Monsanto! This diminishes farmers' dependence on patented "Roundup-ready" seeds, and on the Roundup herbicide itself. That can only be good for everybody except Monsanto.

I'm very surprised Monsanto isn't out there buying and slaughtering every such startup, for precisely this reason.

You better believe they're trying _something_ to preserve their market, it's just more underhanded than that.

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

#316

Post by goodpoint »

MayeulC wrote: post #185
goodpoint wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have multispectral or full-spectrum imaging ...that's exactly what CV needs to handle.

Well, right, but it doesn't need particularly impressive algotithms to achieve something with that data. Those algorithms were here 20 years ago, with less processing power and camera resolution.

A lot of modern ML is not that impressive either.

I can imagine discriminating species of a hundred leaves in a very high resolution images to be very challenging.

The leaves are 3-dimensional objects can be twisted, tangled, curled up, broken, half rotten, sunburnt...

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

#317

Post by kickout »

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 will be a big player in next 2-10 years (search for Rantizo). The more they can operate autonomously the better. The small payload size on drones aren't a huge problem if you can have 'refilling stations'

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

#318

Post by kickout »

delfinom wrote: post #225
Arrath wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. That's a ridiculous solution to a non-existent problem. The robot literally has no rush to go to the weeds. It can crawl along the field by itself 24/7. Throw in a solar panel charging station and you literally have free energy for it to piss away. Instead…

Ok thank you. Common sense on non-programming topics on HN is more rare than I would like. You clearly understand the problem better than most

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

#320

Post by gpm »

myself248 wrote: post #309
gpm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's got a generator on board, so it needs enough space for that. There's no sense letting it get rained on, so it needs some sort of cap (especially given that it's presumably electric high powered lasers). It doesn't seem to move fast enough to care about wind resistance. A cube is a nice easy shape to build... so why not a cube.

I hope future generations will be at least solar-hybrid if not entirely solar. It's not like the thing has any shade to contend with, after all, and most of its loads are electrical.

I don't think solar panels have energy density high enough to make this even remotely plausible. Lasers convert a small percentage of the input energy into output energy, and you need a lot of energy to burn weeds to death.

Elsewhere in this comment section someone pointed out that the generator on this supplies slightly more energy than the rated maximum of most houses. It only has a few sq m of solar space on it for solar panels... that doesn't seem like it will even be a dent.

Like usual, you're better of putting solar panels on the ground somewhere. If this thing ever becomes electric I think it will have to either be by a wire, or by using electricity to convert CO2 back into fuel. Maybe if batteries improve a bit by battery, but right now it sounds like it would need to spend a large portion of it's time recharging (just comparing to electric vehicles).

On the flip side - this might be a great candidate for these guys carbon capture technology: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26412624

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