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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]

#281

Post by JoeAltmaier »

KaiserPro wrote: post #251
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #129

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.

Well not quite. 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....

That's the enviro-theatre anyway.

Folks in the midwest largely use no-till single-application processes. Which prevents weeds from even starting.

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

#282

Post by krosaen »

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…

Creator of Django did an ML project last year and has a lot of good insights - general web / programming know-how is really useful for building custom tooling to manage / observe datasets and things like that.

edit: forgot to include link :)

http://www.holovaty.com/writing/machine-learning-thoughts/

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

#283

Post by bluGill »

conviencefee999 wrote: post #98
defrost wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we succeed with autonomous driving .... 'We' have already succeeded in autonomous driving in agricultural and mining domains - these are much simpler, more tightly controlled and less liability prone than open highways and suburban backstreets. eg: > We run more than 130 autonomous trucks, part of our Autonomous Haulage System, across our Iron Ore operations. The trucks are operated by a supervisory system and a…

Ehhh really haven't. While you could argue farming is different due to it being more constricted, it really isn't and well unlike driving, this has a size constraint which has and likely will not be solved for in the near or distant future. It's complicated and might not be solvable. And well the current advancements while they seem nice aren't very useful. I know individuals who work in this sphere specifically and…

Working for John Deere I can tell you that we are attempting to solve the problems right now. I can't speak for the company, but that we are working on it is public knowledge.

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

#284

Post by bluGill »

deelowe wrote: post #151
conviencefee999 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh really haven't. While you could argue farming is different due to it being more constricted, it really isn't and well unlike driving, this has a size constraint which has and likely will not be solved for in the near or distant future. It's complicated and might not be solvable. And well the current advancements while they seem nice aren't very useful. I know individuals who work in this sphere specifically and…

Don’t leave me hanging. What is the constraint that is unlikely to be solved?

My educated guess is detecting humans/children in places where they shouldn't be. Sending a tractor across a field controlling everything is easy - tractors have been doing this for more than 25 years. Detecting something that shouldn't be there and not killing it is hard, which is why all tractors that do this have some form of sensor to ensure someone is in the tractor. There are a few other issues similar to the above.

I work for John Deere, I can't speak for the company.

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

#285

Post by bluGill »

ben_w wrote: post #237
ajuc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the difference between manually replacing 1 bearing or charging 1 battery and 1000. The only reason you think it's easy is because you ignore the number and just imagine doing it once anyway.

I'd rather replace 10,000 AAA batteries than a single battery that's as big as 10,000 AAA batteries.

The one big battery is easier and faster - in large part because you can't lift that yourself so you have machines to do the work for you. For AAA you could design the same machine, but odds are you didn't.

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

#286

Post by ajuc »

bluGill wrote: post #285
ben_w wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather replace 10,000 AAA batteries than a single battery that's as big as 10,000 AAA batteries.

The one big battery is easier and faster - in large part because you can't lift that yourself so you have machines to do the work for you. For AAA you could design the same machine, but odds are you didn't.

Also the scaling isn't linear. A bus that transports 100 people doesn't burn nearly as much fuel as 100 scooters.

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

#287

Post by bluGill »

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…

> the future is swarms of small robots rather than a few big tractors:

You are missing something important: soil compaction is a sub linear function of weight. which means that larger tractors that cover more area with the same tire tracks are must friendly for the soil, compared to many small tractors. Because of this factor larger is better. Eventually we may get to the point where the tractor runs on tracks, to allow even bigger tractors that touch a smaller are of soil.

Sure flying drones will have less soil compaction, and they will have a place in the future, but keeping something in the air uses vastly more energy than wheels on the ground.

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

#288

Post by bluGill »

illys wrote: post #46
modeless wrote: post #12

Seems like it should hoe each weed instead of spraying it. I guess that's a little harder to do. Maybe a lot harder. Two other things I thought were interesting in the video. One, the idea of mapping the whole field is pretty cool. There must be useful things you could do with a millimeter-scale 3D map of an entire field. Two, this is happening in California, just a few hours' drive from Silicon Valley. I hope some o…

I saw on one of the illustrations that the spray is made of acetic acid. Pretty natural product, aka vinegar at low concentration. Well targeted as they seem to do, I guess it is a good product to preserve the soil and wanted plants with no harmful residues.

Vinegar is more toxic to humans than roundup. And you need a lot more of it to be effective.

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

#289

Post by jollyllama »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #225
jollyllama wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would probably all be much healthier if instead of indirectly subsidizing make-work desk jobs, organic vegetable gardening was subsidized instead.

That would be bad. We would require much more area for the same output.

Gardening would have a higher yield per area than farming. The amount of area needed would decrease. Labor needed would increase.

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

#290

Post by bluGill »

hericium wrote: post #171

It still uses some "95% less" chemicals to kill plants. Why not laser, some pull-from-ground mechanism or scissors to get rid of unwanted plants?

Cultivators used to be very common before chemical sprays. They did work, but the energy - read CO2 emissions - was a lot higher. You are dragging some metal through the ground - think of aerodynamic problems on steroids.

Now there is opportunity to only put the hoe in the ground, and some are working on that. It will still use more energy than chemicals, but it only uses the energy where needed, and avoids chemical resistance so I think there is a place for it. (but see the other replies - there are other limits)

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