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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

#351

Post by Retric »

delfinom wrote: post #227
Retric wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a slow process, further you can always rotate between crops with different spectra.

It sounds like a slow process but plant life cycles are yearly compared to 20+ years for human generations to spawn, it will happen faster than you think. There are already round up resistant weeds and it's only been 50 years.

Even 30 years after first implementation would be several generations of better hardware and software. Spectra is just one way to get v1 out the door, there are many ways you can improve things.

Crops are planted in a specific pattern, at a specific time, grow at a specific rate, and have a unique shape. So you have a lot of information to work with.

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

#352

Post by silasb »

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.

Tethered drones might work.

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

#353

Post by gouggoug »

gvb wrote: post #288

So, looking at the video and "press release" with a jaundiced eye... What is that big unpainted aluminum box sticking out the front? Why is it sticking out the front? It makes the machine look like a prototype, not a production machine. Aren't they "for sale but sold out?" The video section subtitled "The bedtop is scanned to detect weeds in realtime" https://youtu.be/vSPhhw-2ShI?t=58 is ...odd. The two camera shots…

Not to mention the robot looks like a 3D rendering...

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

#354

Post by Broken_Hippo »

gdubs wrote: post #152
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical parts have more ways to break. All of those rocks in the field are just waiting to crunch things up. How long will weeds live if they continuously get their foiliage removed? How about when part of the root (closest to the surface) is damaged/burned as well? I really don't know, but I imagine that if such a robot went out into the field many or most days, there wouldn't be much of an issue. The weeds would…

Tractors break, sure, but steel implements have been doing a pretty good job of handling rocky soil for a very long time. Fixing a blue steel corkscrew seems easier than debugging a laser.

I very highly doubt that a farmer is generally going to debug a laser on the spot. That requires a skill set not really needed to be a farmer, and who knows how long it'll take.

Realistically, a farmer would swap out the part.

Any actual work on the laser is more likely to be done by a trained professional, if anything to cut down on accidental burns.

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

#355

Post by frosted-flakes »

NullPrefix wrote: post #228
SamBam wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Diesel engines can be eventually replaced with overhead wires

In a field? Not likely.

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

#356

Post by SamBam »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #210
SamBam wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the laser wouldn't be setting the whole plant up in smoke. Couldn't it target the base and let it fall?

My understanding of poison ivy is that no part of the plant is nontoxic. Burning just the base would minimize the toxic cloud, but not eliminate it.

I really don't think that burning a line an inch long and 1/16th of an inch thick at the bottom of a stem is going to release any significant amount of toxic cloud. A tiny bit if you're right there next to it, sure, but it would be dissipated within a few minutes.

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

#357

Post by SamBam »

CameronNemo wrote: post #216
SamBam wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know, and the two are often in conflict.

For example, replacing a deforested area might sometimes be faster by introducing a non-native invasive species. From a carbon perspective it would be a net-good, from an ecosystem perspective it would be a net-bad. Which is more important?

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

#359

Post by ping_pong »

arrosenberg wrote: post #341
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.

Maybe very small drones with mirrors and cameras and a ground-based robotic tank with a laser cannon.

This is an incredibly great idea.

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

#360

Post by giantrobot »

maelito wrote: post #250
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…

Paying workers more is difficult when the price of food is supposed to go or stay down.

The labor cost per unit of produce is pretty small. Even doubling wages for harvest and weeding labor wouldn't add significantly to the retail cost of produce. Additionally farming is heavily subsidized in the US. Modest wage increases could and would end up being covered by subsidies by getting them rolled into a Farm Bill.

You can bet that a farm that saved money weeding with robots wouldn't drop the price of produce reflecting their lower costs. Like prices if everything, it's more what the market will bear rather than some geometric relationship to labor/production costs.

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