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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

#371

Post by hawski »

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.

Indeed a good idea, but I would only hope it would have a reliable fail-safe, becaue it would be a little reverse GoldenEye.

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

#372

Post by parasanti »

regularemployee wrote: post #362

can someone enlighten me? I was always taught growing up that weeds are good for the soil, they will generally die out once its done its job. Is killing weeds generally used in unsustainable agriculture or are there weeds that truly needs to be killed?

They use resources that other plants need. They can also smother other plants since weeds are fast growing.

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

#373

Post by djrogers »

jpollock wrote: post #132

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

Depends on the crop. Spacing is a trade off between output, health of individual plants, and workability.

In some cases the tradeoff can simply be between the quantity vs quality of the crop, but it’s not always intuitive which strategy results in improved quality.

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

#374

Post by exabrial »

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…

Actually, the next most logical version is an implement that runs off the PTO drive of a tractor, not drones. One needs to piggyback off existing infrastructure, not replace it.

My high school summer job actually was helping with wheat harvest. You can only work when it's hot as you get better prices on the harvest.

There were certain kinds of weeds that really clog the combine (usually ragweed, not a huge problem in the early summer, but weird things happen) or cause damage to the cutting head (invasive brush/tree species). We walked the field and pulled anything really bad out.

Talk about a way to earn $25/day. You only finished when the equipment was put up for the night.

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

#375

Post by djrogers »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #283
gdubs wrote: post #120

Love seeing advances in this space. I have an 80 acre farm and I’m waiting for an autonomous slope mower. Question about this tech is, does it really kill weeds, or just defoliate them? Like, is this laser strong enough to get down to the roots, which are often very deep with weeds? If not, I’m wondering why lasers instead of something mechanical that can corkscrew down and tear up the entire root?

Defoliating weeds instead of picking them by the roots is a great way to end up with a field of weeds.

Depends on the weed and the ground cover the weeds are competing against. For many weeds, simply mowing them in the presence of decent ground cover is completely effective, as they’re optimized to grow tall quickly - defoliate them at the right time and they’ve already spent their energy reserves.

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

#376

Post by noxer »

NullPrefix wrote: post #238
noxer wrote: post #190

I still think the idea of having a certain type of weed intentionally planted along the crops is better. A symbiosis that prevents unwanted plants to grow. Also the weed whatever it is can be used to feed animals or turn it into some kind of fuel Or it can stay and prevents the solid form going bad in the time where nothing grows. We could probably use high-tech robots to identify the different plans and harvest one…

I have a feeling that this robot would allow to care for multiple plants growing in symbiosis

The harvest is the problem. It usually done by "destroying" almost everything beside whats harvested. Including destroying and disrupting the soil and its microorganisms.

Then we "fix" it by adding whats missing aka we use tons of fossil fertilizer.

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

#380

Post by kube-system »

AlstZam wrote: post #207
pitaj wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying people to walk through fields picking weeds doesn't sound scalable or sustainable to me.

It was for the last 11 000 years. With variabilities, but based on demographic only it was pretty scalable and sustainable.

A mere 125 years ago it required the majority of the US workforce to farm enough food for people to eat. The mechanization of agriculture enabled much of the technological and cultural progress of the past couple centuries.
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