Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#11

Post by samstave » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:42 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #8

samstave wrote: post #7

It said that the capital to do this was $200,000 -- what was the inventory of robots required to accomplish this. What will it take to have a small fleet of robots to manage small farms - but many small farms. What if a community of gardens and farms were dispersed around a neighborhood/small town - and the town shared the use of the autonomous robots wherever possible. Which robots are common to all farms and which…

It will take way longer than 100 years to gey an atmosphere ready to grow earth crops on Mars, if at all possible.

I know that, I was putting a random number.

Regardless, we could still have a fleet of robots go build structures there, then another that will grow things in the structures...

We talk about sending men to mars, but I think it's short-sighted to not first figure out how to send and deploy resources and robots to pre-build infrastructure for said humans - and we should be practicing on the moon.

Or why is it that nobody seems to be talking about this? And specifically talking about practicing in the moon?

Spacex is really focused on a rocket that can get to mars, how much more quickly can it get to the moon?

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#12

Post by abakker » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:47 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

meri_dian wrote: post #2

Automate the supply chains. Start with what is essential then move on from there.

Disagree. Automate the production, which democratizes the supply. Minimal supply chains are necessary if you can produce crops autonomously at the point of consumption (think rooftop solar). It would be wildly inefficient to grow in each person's backyard, but not so to grow in the outer rings of urban areas. Automated production is essential. Supply chains for abundant, distributed resources are superfluous.

I think you might be correct in some domains, but farming isn't one. You simply can't grow all crops in all places, nor is that allocation of land a good use. Barley grows well in flat fields. Not so well in the wooded hills outside Atlanta. Hops won't grow at all where it doesn't freeze in the winter, and basil needs lots of sun and water. We've mostly optimized where we grow crops for land use and yield already, so, it is indeed a supply chain problem to move them to where they need to go.

Also, I'm not sure how automation of labor democratizes supply. supply isn't constrained by labor. It is constrained by yield. Automation won't solve that as much as chemical engineering or more land would.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#13

Post by seiferteric » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:48 AM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #9

> There’s still dirt, early mornings, dirt, more dirt I have always wondered who are these farmers in the dirt in the early morning? Where I farm the environment is rarely suitable for 'being in the dirt' in the morning. Typically the field work starts in the mid-afternoon after the sun has had a chance to dry up the morning's dew or previous days rain. There are definitely some late nights though.

Hot arid climates? In the CA central valley there will be little dew in the morning in summer as it's probably already 70+ degrees F, so the earlier the better.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#14

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:50 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #10

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

True, but that is because the farmers have access to huge fields which let them deploy their equipment efficiently. Autonomous farming would let you theoretically use more marginal lands which are not currently suitable for manual farming.

[deleted]

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#15

Post by joncp » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:50 AM UTC

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and for farmers' bottom lines.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#16

Post by randomdata » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:52 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #10

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

True, but that is because the farmers have access to huge fields which let them deploy their equipment efficiently. Autonomous farming would let you theoretically use more marginal lands which are not currently suitable for manual farming.

I expect you are suggesting that small parcels of land that are far away from large fields are not worth the travel expenses? I'm not sure that robots really improve on that, as fuel, wear and tear, etc. going field to field remain a big detractor. There are plenty of farmers who do it for fun. They'd be happy to spend the time in the machine if labour costs were the only reason to avoid those fields.

I already farm a field that is one acre in size and one that is three acres because they are near to a large field that does justify the travel costs. Any that fit that description are likely to be already in production.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#17

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:53 AM UTC

abakker wrote: post #12

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Automate the production, which democratizes the supply. Minimal supply chains are necessary if you can produce crops autonomously at the point of consumption (think rooftop solar). It would be wildly inefficient to grow in each person's backyard, but not so to grow in the outer rings of urban areas. Automated production is essential. Supply chains for abundant, distributed resources are superfluous.

I think you might be correct in some domains, but farming isn't one. You simply can't grow all crops in all places, nor is that allocation of land a good use. Barley grows well in flat fields. Not so well in the wooded hills outside Atlanta. Hops won't grow at all where it doesn't freeze in the winter, and basil needs lots of sun and water. We've mostly optimized where we grow crops for land use and yield already, so…

> I'm not sure how automation of labor democratizes supply.

It puts the control back in the hands of consumers of the product, instead of producers (which is more often than not, multinationals or large corporations who are motivated to extract as much profit as possible from their business transactions).

You do not have time or resources to farm your own plot of land (generally speaking, hand waving away the homesteaders here). Your ag co-op [1] does. This is to farming as AWS was to infrastructure (if I may be permitted to torture an analogy).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_cooperative

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#18

Post by gbrown » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:54 AM UTC

joncp wrote: post #15

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and for farmers' bottom lines.

I've daydreamed about trying exactly that on a small scale. Industrially, that would be amazing for the environment.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#19

Post by Houshalter » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:55 AM UTC

thomas_howland wrote: post #4

The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, m…

Yeah this isn't terribly exciting. People have been demoing self driving tractors and farm machinery for decades. Ford had one in the 1950s. Most of the hard work like actually picking the crop has already been solved, and making the tractor self driving just saves a few hours of work at most.

What would be really cool is automating crops that still require lots of manual labor. Like vegetables. That's the reason they are still so expensive. An automated greenhouse would be enormous news.

Whats also cool is stuff like this (https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robo...) which eliminates the need for pesticides.

Re: Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley

#20

Post by ModernMech » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 12:58 AM UTC

gbrown wrote: post #18

joncp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and for farmers' bottom lines.

I've daydreamed about trying exactly that on a small scale. Industrially, that would be amazing for the environment.

Especially if said robots can run on the weeds and bugs they are removing!