251–260 of 326 posts
Chemicals are maybe the smallest cost of agriculture. Used to be > So saving even 95% is maybe not a compelling economical argument to use this.
resistance is a massive problem, so you need to spray more.
But that kills off the soil, so you need to put more fertiliser in.
But that means you get weeds, so you need to nuke the field, which means the soil blows away, which means you need more fertiliser....
I;m curios how much the AI affect the chemicals usage. I mean, from the video looks like the less chemicals comes mainly from the jet spray system. The AI could limit the jet spray zone, but how much? Is the game worth the candle?
Because you can now identify the weed's location to within 15mm, (down from >5meters) you can use much smaller, moveable sprayers to apply the chemical, rather than just spraying the entire field.
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…
I'm not convinced vertical systems will every be very economic. It's much cheaper to just stick some seeds in a field than build some high tech building. Re letting the earth go wild, replacing regular meat with artificial would go a long way - a lot of the land is used to feed animals we eat.
The water shortages are going to be our first impasse, because there's no remedy. Current farming uses vast amounts of water, much of which leaves the area due to evaporation. This leads to rapid desertification of regions, and then traditional farming becomes absolutely impossible (without lengthy restoration beforehand).
Reducing meat consumption definitely makes the problems less immediate, but so far it doesn't seem like we will be able to reduce that consumption. So I wouldn't count this as any near term solution.
"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.
I wonder which one would work best on farmers. The corporate one feels more polished, but the simpler one feels more honest.
Given the computer vision component is the hard part, why stick with traditional pesticides? Is there any limitation stopping lasers from being viable?
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,…
Ideally we would work to develop food forests everywhere in and around our population centers. However, that's much harder for a multinational company to make money doing, so it's not going to happen. Likewise, with city land becoming increasingly expensive, reverting blocks or spaces to be used to develop food forests is not likely.
Maybe our best bet is to learn how to eat money.
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.
It wasn't. It was confused with a government vehicle. The one day a year that is synonymous with hunting accidents just provided plausible deniability for taking a few pot shots.
"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 ;-)
How much will Avo cost?
wouldn't it be easier/cheaper to just enclose the whole field in a giant greenhouse with a 100% controllable environment? I mean, I hear many crops are lost every year to things like floods from rainstorms that require pricey insurance coverage, the idea of having a guaranteed crop every year with no unauthorized organisms and perfect lighting and watering and nutrition seems like it would eventually more than make u…
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.