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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

#451
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that better than a wheeled drone dragging a giant orange extension cord behind it? I'm not sure that's a great idea either, but flying brings more problems than it solves in this problem space.

Given that the plants are on the ground, I imagine not sweeping over them with an extension cable would be an obvious advantage. Still, you could work with suspended powerlines as easily for the big-box drone as with tractors, which brings me to another (probably dumb) question: Why has nobody built a landline electric tractor?

Farmers sweep things along the field all the time. The standard farming sprinkler is supplied by pipes / hoses which are bridged above crop height between wheeled towers. As the spinkler works its way in a circle on the field around the water supply, the towers roll over a negligible amount of crop.

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

#452
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that better than a wheeled drone dragging a giant orange extension cord behind it? I'm not sure that's a great idea either, but flying brings more problems than it solves in this problem space.

Given that the plants are on the ground, I imagine not sweeping over them with an extension cable would be an obvious advantage. Still, you could work with suspended powerlines as easily for the big-box drone as with tractors, which brings me to another (probably dumb) question: Why has nobody built a landline electric tractor?

> landline electric tractor

Well, there are some robots that travel on aerial lines, typically used for cable inspection. Here's a quick search result: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robo...

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

#453
post #406

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. 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…

It’s not ridiculous at all, hours count. I haven’t looked at the article, but I’m assuming it’s the same machine, it’s a 10,000 pound unit with tiny little tires and a 75 hp diesel engine. It’s going to compact the soil, get stuck, and waste fuel driving around looking for weeds. If sending a 20 pound gas drone with a 2 TB solid-state drive and 60 FPS 4K camera on it up and down the field for one 100th of the fuel co…

> It’s going to compact the soil, get stuck, and waste fuel driving around looking for weeds.

This true of any modern farming equipment, which is why planting strategy is so critical--I kept messing up in my first year as I was going way too fast instead of taking my time and my planted rows were never straight, it was in a green house and we had an old diesel tractor so my lungs were hurting after the first hour and I just compromised on that aspect.

But then when I had to go back and weed, maintain and eventually harvest the oddly planted fields of salads and potatoes I made sure to follow the natural ebb and flow of the soil compaction, which was there even after it was tilled.

What I'm saying is that the compacted soil can help you in later seasons to maintain the direction of growth so it's not entirely a bad thing to have. And unless you farmed the same fields for several seasons/years you would overlook this as a net benefit. Eventually seasoned farm hands can do it while drinking and smoking and just listening to how the engine is struggling without even touching the steering wheel, they can even get out of the tractor and walk ahead of it as it's crawling forward to check if everything is fine. Where as for apprentices like myself who had no real experience in Ag it was a remarkable discovery that one shouldn't overlook.

Also, drones are already widely in use; they monitor temperature and moisture in real time and a offer other services right now [0]. Their is a company that I found that posted here on YC a few years ago that offers this as a service [1].

I was actually going to get my commercial drone's license a couple month's before I retired as a farm manager in Hawaii due to extensive injuries, but my fintech startup required saving and scraping all my pennies to afford getting it off the ground. I might consider getting it again as things start to be more widely deployed and the costs keep coming down and I still would like to be involved in some capacity in Ag.

0:https://uavcoach.com/agricultural-drones/

1:https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/terravion

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

#454
post #254
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.

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.

I'll bet there's creative solutions that could take advantage of a hub and spoke model. Picture a solar recharging base station that drones can dock with to charge while others rotate in.

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

#455
Looks like a very useful machine. It seems awfully bulky, but then the CO2 tubes used in 150 watt lasers are probably around six feet long, so that kind of sets a minimum size for the machine. A 74 horsepower generator sounds like overkill, though.

I suppose they probably use galvanometers for aiming the laser? Galvos are very fast but they tend not to be terribly accurate. This device isn't for precision machining so it's probably good enough. I'd also expect the vibration and jostling of the machine to be a problem, but maybe it stops momentarily whenever it does a laser sweep.

I'd think that they really ought to have some kind of shroud draped around it during regular operation to prevent eye damage if someone is too close (especially if there's a risk of shiny metal objects lying on the ground). CO2 laser light is invisible; generally, you just see a white flash when it burns things because that's the light given off by the heated material.

There'd also be an obvious fire hazard, though in practice a well-focused high power beam can often just vaporize a thing before it catches on fire. Cutting paper and cardboard in a laser cutter is usually fine; it's wood that tends to burn. (Especially oily wood.) At any rate they'd probably be restricted to using the machine when fire risk is low.

I wonder how well it copes with weeds that are growing right next to desirable plants? As the crop plants get bigger, it must get harder to get the right angle to burn the weed without hitting the plant.

I also wonder how effective it is at actually killing weeds. Maybe if it can get them when they're small, it can linger the laser over the site of the weed long enough to cook the root.

I'm hoping this sort of thing catches on and becomes more advanced. Near where I live we have a huge park that's being overtaken by English ivy. It's very hilly and forested, so any ivy-killing robot would probably have to be something like a hexapod, and lasers are kind of questionable in a forest setting except maybe on wet days.

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

#456
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I have this struggle often. Before software engineering, I was working on permaculture…

Have you looked at sandstorm.io ? I have been looking at it as one of the pieces for “regenerative software”.

I still have no idea how to make a living from this though.

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

#458

"It's harder to find people to do that work every single year" Translation: The wages we pay are crap and we're not going to pay them more.

I'd push back on that a little bit. I grew up on a farm that's still operating today, and it truly is difficult to find people to work those jobs. The farm pays just as well as any other job in my rural hometown, so from my experience, it seems to be more of an issue with the work itself. The hours are longer, and work is more sporadic/seasonal. When harvest rolls around, farmers need to get the crop out of the groun…

There was an artile on HN about the influence of movies on "cool".

After Jurassic park, there was a huge uptick in paleontology, and everything else related, even Veterianism (!).

Most of the currents that kids get from movies are destructive to society IMO, but if it could be tapped into - it is a source of influence. Humans naturally copy what they see.

If a series of movies with the hero being an entomologist came out, it would do us good. If there were a bunch of farm boys that played with nature in a way that made it cool, we would harvest the benefits for generations.

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

#459
post #284
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they were able to make drones work, it could open up more variable farm designs: rows are mostly necessary so that farms can be serviced by vehicles. Polyculture farming could become much more economically feasible if drones could weed out all non-whitelisted species. Would also be a great boon to forestry: would be awesome to make a bunch of drones to fly through forests and zap any non-native invasive species it…

> If they were able to make drones work

Yes, let's put powerful lasers on drones flown by AI. What could happen? I just hope the human recognition model doesn't shoot more of one race than another.

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

#460
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that propane torches are an imprecise mechanism generally used to clear dead area between planted rows, while this laser based solution could be used selectively within a planted row (provided it is real at all). Fully agreed about the 3-point comment though. Why take on building an autonomous tractor AND a targeted weed-killer, rather than tackling the differentiating problem only? Seems li…

Right, which is why I think it's likely a result of VC direction. It's not enough to have a profitable or sensible product, it has to be something that can sell in acquisition for 10 or 100 x the investment given. "Autonomous vehicles are hot and AI is hot, go with that."

Yes, but autonomous vehicles with AI don't scale at zero cost like web apps, so the valuation shouldn't have the same multiplier.
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