411–420 of 483 posts
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…
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That was my thought as well. Thanks for sharing the interesting article
Yeah, this robot is an example of tech being utilized to extract value. The ML, CV, and robotic tech tickles my inner geek, but tech was not designed or deployed in a regenerative way. There are many things we can do to have more resilient, restorative, regenerative agriculture ... that often don't involve much high tech at all. So what is a more worthwhile use of high tech? Being someone in tech and having greatly e…
I have this struggle often. Before software engineering, I was working on permaculture farms and apprenticed as a natural builder (cob mostly).
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Why did you link to an article about pacific northwest indigenous forest gardens. It seems like you are making an implied argument. Not stating your argument ensures it can't attacked. Not wanting your argument attacked suggests it is weak and won't stand up to scrutiny.
You caught me red handed. I have made explicit arguments elsewhere on HN before. It usually involves writing a lot of exposition, starting with identifying and deconstruction of the default paradigm that some people call “Value Extraction”. It can get very in involved. This time, I was adding a subtle sarcasm, which I knew a small minority of HN readers will pick up. They are already familiar with food forests, resto…
No one is suggesting this be done. Fanatical monocropists don't exist.
Your argument is based on a false dichotomy. We can make monocrop farming more efficient and environmentally friendly (eliminate pesticides) while also exploring other systems.
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You caught me red handed. I have made explicit arguments elsewhere on HN before. It usually involves writing a lot of exposition, starting with identifying and deconstruction of the default paradigm that some people call “Value Extraction”. It can get very in involved. This time, I was adding a subtle sarcasm, which I knew a small minority of HN readers will pick up. They are already familiar with food forests, resto…
>Rather than eliminating everything but the monocrop No one is suggesting this be done. Fanatical monocropists don't exist. Your argument is based on a false dichotomy. We can make monocrop farming more efficient and environmentally friendly (eliminate pesticides) while also exploring other systems.
More efficient and environmentally friendly are contradictory in terms of monocrop
> Fanatical monocropists don't exist.
Uh what? What about the almost 100 million acres of corn in the US?
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.
A spider-carriage walking robot which could step around the valuable plants, climb steeper hills, and wouldn't dictate a row-and-plow approach to agriculture, that could be pretty compelling. Less soil compaction, more flexibility, could work inside forested regions as well. It has potential.
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Depends on the laser(s) and the weeds in question. Deep rooted weeds require different IR/UV than broadleaf. They actually kill them because they cook the root. That's ALSO why it has to be autonomous - it can't be done at a run. We worked on this when I was at MTD, but I think they abandoned the project after I left.
Wouldn't a microwave be easier (power, speed, penetration depth, etc)?
Here's a very (terribly) high level technology overview from the company we were working with: https://g-neighbor.com/gni-technology/
> The reason a plant is green is because it reflects green light and for photosynthesis a plant uses blue light. Overloading the blue frequency range disrupts the enzymes in the photosynthetic process, which cuts off the food supply to the plant and it dies. Some herbicides overload the metabolic system of the plant and makes the weed burn from the inside out. I thought that overloading the photosynthetic system would maybe do the same thing.
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If they're fuel powered drones, they need to refuel. Plus that's potentially expensive to operate depending how many you need and how heavy they are.
There's probably something to be said for hard-wired drones here. The weight of the cable is something you have to contend with, but with a physical wire you can run a larger drone longer.
I'm not sure that's a great idea either, but flying brings more problems than it solves in this problem space.
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…
Most farms irrigate with a giant automated system that sweeps around the field in regular intervals. These weed death lasers could be integrated to the base of the system and ran from the same power that moves the pivot.
Since these things don't move all that fast, you could have a central track and move the killer box up and down the line.
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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.
Completely agree about flying: but I wonder about the wheel. A spider-carriage walking robot which could step around the valuable plants, climb steeper hills, and wouldn't dictate a row-and-plow approach to agriculture, that could be pretty compelling. Less soil compaction, more flexibility, could work inside forested regions as well. It has potential.