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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]

#241

Post by pvaldes »

rmason wrote: post #195
diordiderot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best parts of that job was when you stood still for a minute late in the season, completely oblivious to the stream of fire ants pouring into your boots

I could tell stories for hours. The scariest one: I did a lot of soil testing. Refused to go out on November 15th, the start of deer season, after the 4WD pickup I was using was shot up in a field. I hugged the floorboard as shots went through the truck and just over me. How a bright yellow pickup could be confused with a deer is beyond me.

That would be a good time to use those extra-loud non-stop alarm in your car.

Every single people working in their property should have one working non-stop in the deer season to signal that is not a deer. Some just are deertonic and unable to distinguish it from cars.

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

#242

Post by bitL »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #217
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.

It's already a problem, I agree. Another big problem is the increasing measurable presence of those chemicals in pastry/bread/flour these days, with unknown long-term effects.

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

#243

Post by bitL »

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.

Good bugs often need bad bugs to thrive, so do birds.

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

#245

Post by moffkalast »

krypty28 wrote: post #226
Animats wrote: post #163

"Never been done before, in any field?" Er, no. * John Deere, has "See and spray". * Robovator * Carbon Robotics Laser Weeder * Ecorobotics solar powered autonomous weeder. Your choice of chemical, laser, or mechanical weed killing. The first two above are production products.

It's spelled Ecorobotix (I work there :-)). We have two machines, ARA a mounted-sprayer and AVO the solar powered autonomous weeder you are talking about. https://ecorobotix.com/en/ Ask me anything ;-)

Anything? :D What does your stack look like? Do you use ROS or something more in-house?

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

#246

Post by moffkalast »

chris_va wrote: post #158
lchengify wrote: post #17

There's another company called Carbon Robotics that uses lasers instead of weedkiller. The attachment they built needed a custom cooling rig to deal with the dozens of lasers. Super interesting engineering going on with agtech. https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/farming-robot

Hm, why lasers? Seems like a phased array microwave would be cheaper, require no moving parts, and be able to target the root system ... and be less of a safety risk.

I suspect the precision wouldn't be high enough, resulting in a lot of dead produce?

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

#247

Post by z9znz »

klabb3 wrote: post #232
z9znz wrote: post #218

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 tha…

> But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. First, you're underselling it. 95% less pesticides is huge. If that's economically viable we're a LOT better off. I have my doubts since it's clearly a PR video, but still. Secondly, the analogy falls short. The goal of horses and cars is transportation of goods and people, which is easy to measure and cost. Agriculture is…

Reducing pesticide use is a big deal. But that is a small issue compared to the bigger problem, which as you point out is nutrition.

Crop densities have been increasing dramatically over the last few decades, well beyond what natural soil systems can handle. Consequently, fertilizer use has increased dramatically. Our soils are just nearly dead as the factory monoculture farming has sucked everything out that it can (and killed a lot of important things it needed).

This current advancement (TFA) is just a bandaid, or paving a crack in the road. Perhaps a better analogy is that this is paving a crack in the road when we should be designing a whole new transportation system to meet our current and future needs.

Most of this agriculture is owned by a few huge companies. They are not interested in large systemic changes as those cost capital. They would much rather optimize what they have, even if the cliff is visible in the distance. Beyond one earnings quarter or perhaps a CEO's tenure, they don't care. As long as they are not standing on the cliff today, you cannot expect real (beneficial) changes.

As for replacing nutrition, this needs more research. But there are aquaponic systems which seem promising and enable a much more closed loop with vastly less waste.

Oh speaking of waste, I didn't even mention water yet. Current farming systems use water like it will never go away (and is free), but we know it's a problem now and presents its own absolute cliff in the near future.

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

#248

Post by itronitron »

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.

Why not both? You could have each train actually be an array of arms that reach out and pick people up and move them along their route. The arms wouldn't have to be as long since the train is moving along the rail, and a select number of arms could be reserved for first class passengers.

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

#249

Post by KaiserPro »

z9znz wrote: post #218

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 tha…

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

nope.

because vertical farms require a fucktonne of power and infrastructure. Moreover they are only really useful for certain types of crops (ie salad)

Your stables (rice, cereals and root crops) don't work well in vertical farms.

What you're actually trying to make is a greenhouse, and the dutch have solved that pretty much already (apart from the massive monoculture bit)

I suspect the future is actually in dense mixed crop fields. If tilling, cropping and tending can be automated then making sure a plant grows in it's allotted space become simple and cheap. It reduces the risk of total crop wipeout, can keep a field productive all year, and if done properly can improve soil quality.

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

#250

Post by z9znz »

krzat wrote: post #228
z9znz wrote: post #218

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 tha…

Plants need energy to grow, and the easiest way of providing that energy is direct sunlight. Which means that vertical won't work too well. I suppose if you wanted be really space efficient, you could use nuclear energy to cultivate yeast.

In much of the developed world, solar energy doesn't come from directly above, it comes from a much lower angle. Trapezoidal shaped buildings can collect a great deal of direct sunlight. And further, with reflectors it's possible to direct and concentrate this where it is most needed.
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