Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 326 posts

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#201

Post by donkeyd »

battery_glasses wrote: post #70

When I see stuff like this sometimes I get depressed that I'm building apps that just move little bits of information around the web and don't have any real demonstrable value to the world. How hard is the jump into the realm of computer vision/AI/robotics for someone with strong skills and experience building web applications? Is the coding much different? Is a company like this employing math/theroy-heavy people to…

I work at a company doing smart stuff with computers (which some would consider AI) that helps with, among others, the energy transition and getting people across the world broadband. Only about 2 out of 20 devs are actually working on the complicated algorithms. The others are working on the stuff you need to build around it to allow people to actually use the algos. On top of the algos is a pretty complicated web app, which takes most of the actual development time.

So you won't actually have to jump into a whole new career in order to contribute to these types of products. You just have to search for a company that works on a challenge you want to contribute to.

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#202

Post by ajuc »

borispavlovic wrote: post #194
ajuc wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called a train. It's great. You can read a book while you are transported, it uses very little power to get you there, it can be 0 emission, there are no traffic jams. Sadly it's not fashionable cause you can't show off how wealthy you are by using it.

First class wagons are used exactly for that, to show the wealth.

Not really. I often take 1st class because 2nd class is full and I'd have to stand for 2 hours and the difference is 5-10 USD.

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#203

Post by thrwawy74 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #170
robotresearcher wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the future is swarms of small robots A key problem with small autonomous robots is their energy supply and mass. Batteries have low energy density. Actuators have bad power to weight ratios too. Living things are enormously more efficient. So much so that the intuition apparently offered by watching animals usually does not apply. This is extremely true for swarm robotics, inspired by ants, termites, etc. Swarm cri…

This is spot on. I work in this industry (contributing architect of https://nelsonirrigation.com/products/twig-wireless-controls... ). We dream of lots of fun things. And even try some of them. But not a few days go by that we don’t once again mutter “power is king” To each other. Everything we do revolves around the constraint of power budgets.

So... we engineer the plants to grow bigger to accommodate for robots that cannot be made smaller, or with denser battery packs :D

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#204

Post by ajuc »

sshine wrote: post #193
ajuc wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called a train. It's great. You can read a book while you are transported, it uses very little power to get you there, it can be 0 emission, there are no traffic jams. Sadly it's not fashionable cause you can't show off how wealthy you are by using it.

I occasionally take the train because I like the atmosphere. In Europe, taking the train is often more expensive than flying. Sadly it's not fashionable because it isn't cheaper and takes a lot longer.

It's faster than flights on short (<3 hour) routes because you don't have the whole security theatre thing. Also train stations are in the city center usually and airports are in the outskirts.

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#205

Post by Ekaros »

Ancalagon wrote: post #83
worldsayshi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what you're describing is still in the realm of sci fi because of limitations in robot autonomy that we have expected to break through many times without success. If we succeed with autonomous driving we will probably succeed in these domains as well. As well as many other domains.

Also I think maintenance of 1000 tiny drones is going to be a lot more difficult than that of one big tractor

Taking real life analogy of probably similar complexity scenario. Would you prefer to maintain 1 very big photo copier. Or 100 distributed desktop printers...

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#206

Post by temptemptemp111 »

thwieruo23434 wrote: post #146
bamboozled wrote: post #5

Weeds are the enemy /s But really, the whole idea of having perfectly manicured fields like that with no sign of any weeds around seems like the real problem to me. Zero biodiversity…we wonder where the insects are going ?

I'm not surprised you're being downvoted. Us lot in India think the occidental culture is inherently mono-cultural; even with all the DEI stuff, all that is being fostered is phenotypic diversity (the most useless type). Classical India seems to have had better ways. In an introduction to Dharampal's works (who has written a lot of science in pre-Modern India), Claude Alvares notes how the Dutch, who had reduced the…

No post body was provided.

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#207

Post by blubbi »

mastazi wrote: post #60

This is an improvement within the current paradigm of "big ag", but IMHO tech is opening the possibility of a completely different way of doing things. For example, this comment which is below the linked video imagines a robot-maintained food forest, I think it's on point because I, too, believe that the future is swarms of small robots rather than a few big tractors: > Imagine, a few years down the line, applying th…

Not a drone yet, but hey, less than 200kg are pretty much flyweight in farming ;) https://dahliarobotics.com/video

It doesn't even need to use herbicides because it removes weeds mechanically. We actually build it to also fit into Europe's small(er) scale farms as well.

Regarding the energy issues mentioned multiple times in various threads here: We managed to make it solar powered and battery buffered to work autonomously for more than a working day.

Disclosure: Co-funder of the company

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#208

Post by Ekaros »

danielheath wrote: post #23
ajpgrealish wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small Robot Company have a robot called Dick which uses "Non-Chemical Weeding", i.e. they zap the weed to kill it, and it's root. They use other small robots to do the mapping and planting. I really like the idea of small, specialised robots for different tasks. https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/weed-killing

Weed zapping is fascinating - but putting the kind of power electronics required to deliver sufficient voltage in a mobile robot is terrifying from an OHSA perspective. One group I'm familiar with are using 50kv (and "more than enough" amps) for the purpose.

Farming machines are already rather deadly. They are big, have cutting implements... So it probably wouldn't change that much.

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#209

Post by psychoslave »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #152
robotresearcher wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the future is swarms of small robots A key problem with small autonomous robots is their energy supply and mass. Batteries have low energy density. Actuators have bad power to weight ratios too. Living things are enormously more efficient. So much so that the intuition apparently offered by watching animals usually does not apply. This is extremely true for swarm robotics, inspired by ants, termites, etc. Swarm cri…

what if we make them bigger than insects but still relatively small? just an arm on a track. heck, we can put the energy in the track too. boom, no battery.

Meganeura is an insect too, so most civil drones are already smaller than biggest insects.

It’s interesting to note how the size of Meganeura is credited to environmental factors (oxygen ration in the air). Context is everything, as usual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura

Re: Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

#210

Post by psychoslave »

ajuc wrote: post #204
sshine wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally take the train because I like the atmosphere. In Europe, taking the train is often more expensive than flying. Sadly it's not fashionable because it isn't cheaper and takes a lot longer.

It's faster than flights on short (<3 hour) routes because you don't have the whole security theatre thing. Also train stations are in the city center usually and airports are in the outskirts.

On more actual security concerns side, you will have a hard time hijacking a train and jet into the side of a skyscraper.
Post reply on HN