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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]

#291

Post by bluGill »

selcuka wrote: post #179
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?

Spray is cheaper, and when you can precisely target the weeds you can use less harmful chemicals, such as acetic acid or even hot water.

acetic acid is more harmful than the chemicals that farmers are using, plus it is only effective in much larger quantities. Sure we use it in cooking, but that doesn't mean it is safe.

Look up the SDS for various chemicals, it can be very eye opening. Some common household stuff is very dangerous.

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

#292

Post by ben_w »

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.

If I had to replace 10k batteries, I'd probably make (or buy) a machine for that too. However, even replacing 10k batteries by hand probably costs less in employee hours than a single one-off machine for either example.

(40 hours / 10,000 batteries = 14.4 seconds per battery; USA minimum wage = $7.25/h = $290 per 40h week, about the same as the cheapest hydraulic lift I saw on machinemart.co.uk at current exchange rates, but I'm not a mechanic so I don't know if that would be the right tool for the job anyway).

And of course, the same applies if we really had drone swarms — anything like this would be automated, up to and including full disassembly of damaged units so their parts could be reused for new units, e.g. https://youtu.be/pDZdnbI0MAc

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

#293

Post by bluGill »

jollyllama wrote: post #289
quixoticelixer- wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. Gardening the typical garden crops do - but those are high labor which is why we garden them. You could plant wheat in your garden it would be more labor, but your yields would probably be less, or if you are really good the same.

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

#294

Post by bluGill »

ALittleLight wrote: post #29

One thought I had while watching that the video didn't seem to explore is that if you can precisely map the field and remember every plant, and you have 4 million plants on your field, then it seems like you could enable precise experiments. Need to find the best mix for fertilizer or pesticides? Seems like you could do very precise and large N experiments to nail down what is best for your plants in your field and p…

Farmers are already doing that. You don't need to map out each individual plant, as there isn't really much you can do with that level of data. Just map the field down to small squares each covering a few square meters and that is good enough. Going to the individual plant doesn't help as you can't do anything to one plant that won't leak to the next, but even if you could the difference between what two plants next to either other need is insignificant. Across a whole field there is a big difference though, so you want to break the field up some.

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

#296

Post by illys »

bluGill wrote: post #288
illys wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you develop? Kind of toxicity? As traces in food? Source?

I put vinegar in my salad sauce, I would not dare with glyphosate.

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

#297

Post by jollyllama »

bluGill wrote: post #293
jollyllama wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not really. Gardening the typical garden crops do - but those are high labor which is why we garden them. You could plant wheat in your garden it would be more labor, but your yields would probably be less, or if you are really good the same.

Most people would be much healthier consuming less soybeans and corn syrup and more garden vegetables.

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

#299

Post by lancesells »

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…

I feel this dream of robots everywhere gets us farther from a garden of Eden.

To cultivate the earth we're going to mine other parts of it? I'm not suggesting getting rid of the tools that improve quality of life but does automating one aspect not cause 100 other things down the line? There's mining, factories, repairing, replacing.

Maybe instead of robots we work on getting people to have gardens on their property, in cities use the rooftops, stop importing foods from across the globe, etc.

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

#300

Post by conviencefee999 »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #216
conviencefee999 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it has more to do with creating robots at this size that can take and complete complex tasks not the honey bees.
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