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

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

#211

Post by psychoslave »

EGreg wrote: post #155
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…

The problem is that swarms of robots can be used for destructive purposes. There, the amount of energy expended and the loss of some drones is no match for the destruction caused. Not to mention all those decentralized self healing swarms are totally resistant to the conventional “destroy the Borg queen” nonsense trope of so many alien movies. (Yes I specifically mentioned the Borg queen because it was the moment Tre…

>The problem is that swarms of robots can be used for destructive purposes.

Well, toxic chemical agents can also be used as weapon on human civil, and — sadly — it was actually used that way. Plus even when you use them for farming, you still have pollution that will erode biodiversity, human health, and other sustainable environment negative impacts.

Not to say that robot swarm is necessarily a perfect green solution. You still have to build them and feed them with energy, so even if the robot would be exempt of undesirable side effect on local operational site, the global impact would most likely include plants in their lifecycle.

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

#212

Post by dangerlibrary »

ajuc wrote: post #190
sshine wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could simultaneously absolve the need for autonomous vehicles, because whenever you need to go somewhere, you could just make the giant arm put you there.

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.

> There are no traffic jams

In the US, most tracks prioritize freight traffic over passenger rail. And there is a tremendous amount of freight traffic. There may not often be traffic jams, but when you are diverted to side track to wait and allow a priority freight train through, it's not uncommon to wait a very long time (I've been delayed more than an hour on the 3 hour train ride from Portland to Seattle).

There are also huge bottlenecks in US track infrastructure that absolutely do lead to traffic jams - perhaps most infamously in New York City. Vetoing the addition of 6 additional tracks through NYC is one of the reason Chris Christie was so hated.

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

#213

Post by lstodd »

Ancalagon wrote: post #101
ForrestN wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't really understand your assumptions. Why would 1 massive machine capable of doing all the various tasks of managing this farm require less maintenance than 1000 presumably much simpler, smaller machines? Assuming other things besides mobility break, I don't think retrieval would be much more of an issue, or that we'd have reason to expect the failure rate to be higher for each smaller, simpler drone th…

I did not assume the smaller drones would be simpler than the tractor. In fact I'd expect them to be similarly if not more complex.

More complex for sure. If you watched the video, there's still a tractor. And instead of a simple plastic tank, it hauls a shitton of electronics.

Now, the video is shot in a shiny nice weather day. Now imagine how would it perform if it's raining since last Tuesday.

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

#215

Post by zeckalpha »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #198
bitL wrote: post #197

On one hand, this will maximize crop per area. On the other hand, it will kill off all insects that require diverse sets of plants, causing issues in the food chain above. The long-term consequences are unknown, likely not good.

I'd think you'd be able to identify good and bad bugs. If you mean killing off bad bugs will have unknown consequences, then yeah, probably.

Some good bugs need plant diversity.

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

#216

Post by quixoticelixer- »

conviencefee999 wrote: post #99
_aavaa_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next up, swarms of robot bees to do the pollination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation

Ironically this is actually one of the bigger problems to solve for in the generation and is one that has not been solved for.

This is not one of the bigger problems to solve for our generation. European honey bees are not going anywhere.

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

#217

Post by quixoticelixer- »

bitL wrote: post #197

On one hand, this will maximize crop per area. On the other hand, it will kill off all insects that require diverse sets of plants, causing issues in the food chain above. The long-term consequences are unknown, likely not good.

What do you think currently happens in most fields? I'll give you a hint. They dont just let weeds grow.

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

#218

Post by z9znz »

Technically this is very cool. But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft.

The future will be something like, or at least based on, vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) automated farms.

The best hope we have for solving food needs AND climate problems is to let as much earth as possible go wild, and reduce and optimize our footprint. Actually that's not correct - the best hope we have is to allow human population growth to go negative and also do smarter things.

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

#219

Post by quixoticelixer- »

cwkoss wrote: post #28
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #2

Love these types of advances though I wonder if weeds and pests will adapt to outwit the robot or if our ability to adapt automation to such changes simply will always/usually be too rapid for nature to keep up.

There is a plant that mimics the shapes of other leaves - even if the leaves are made out of plastic. Pretty fascinating, the same photoreceptors suspected to enable this have been found in other plants, but the others don't use it to engage in mimicry. Weeds adapting to look like non-weeds is highly plausible, IMO. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8903786/#:~:tex... .

> Weeds adapting to look like non-weeds is highly plausible, IMO.

It's not highly plausible. It would take a lot of generations and a lot of mutations for this to happen.

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

#220

Post by quixoticelixer- »

MikePlacid wrote: post #143
bergenty wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there is anything a plant can realistically do to adapt to a high enough wattage laser burning it away in the seedling stage.

- mimicry? - going invisible?

Would be very very difficult for most weeds to mimic most crop plants. Plants can not become invisible.
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