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A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

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Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#11

Post by RankingMember »

knodi123 wrote: post #8
spywaregorilla wrote: post #2

> The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?

Why did they decide to name it after a horribly destructive pest that plagues owners of grain silos? Would the Roomba have been as successful if it was named the iCockroach?

The Beatles did alright!

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#12

Post by bumby »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #2

> The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?

This article gives a good overview of the danger:

https://www.farmprogress.com/grains/significant-number-grain...

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#13

Post by quesera »

voisin wrote: post #3

Crazy that this work has been done by hand. I always assumed there would be an augur or something inside.

Made me laugh. An augur is a person who inteprets the will of the gods, which would certainly have applications, even inside a grain silo!

But an auger would be more directly useful to the problem at hand.

Apologies for the pedantry!

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#14

Post by jerf »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #2

> The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?

Adding to the Hacker News Impromptu Grain Bin Education Hour, a Smarter Every Day video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBV6M7VOFU

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#15

Post by bewareandaware »

This seems like another high tech solution looking for a problem. I'm not heavy agriculture savy but it seems to me the same could be solved by having 2 or 3 archimedes screws on the bin which could keep grain moving over time and preventing it from forming the clods.

The bot could also be radio controlled and it would still remove the need of a human going in.

Another pet peeve of mine is the robot-as-a-service part - can't we just buy stuff and keep it anymore?

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#16

Post by masklinn »

voisin wrote: post #3

Crazy that this work has been done by hand. I always assumed there would be an augur or something inside.

There are definitely automation tools (augers, aerators, …) but they tend to be pretty fixed and inflexible, and sometimes there's an issue with them, and you need one of each system you want / need for each bin.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#18

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting the job done. To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them. It's just a task and like any other task you should approach it in a smart manner if you want the best results. Selling something as a safety improvement isn't that easy because the physics involved in bulk materials or heavy equipment are always going to hurt people who don't work smart given enough exposure and likewise the ROI of removing any one type of exposure is low.

Now, if the machine can all but eliminate the need for the manual job they might sell a few. Because farmers love when shit just magically works because the day only has so many hours in it and one less someone has to stop what you're doing to deal with.

On a more technical note, bulk dry goods can generally be persuaded to follow gravity if you give them a kick start with vibration. This approach has a bunch of pluses (the equipment is very reliable and typically you can resolve blockage by varying the frequency) but I don't know why it isn't used for grain (though it is used on the trucks and rail cars that transport grain). You typically see it in bulk material handling settings where you can't afford to stop the line and/or it's too dangerous to make someone clear a blockage manually so I assume it's a cost thing and farming margins aren't big enough. It seems like these guys went and invented a robot that solves a problem that has an existing solution. But the article doesn't mention why the existing solution doesn't get used for grain and why the new robot will. I get that it's a high level press release but I still wanna know.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#19

Post by masklinn »

seneca wrote: post #7

Agriculture is an area still ripe for technological innovation. It looks less and less like it did a generation ago, but there are still many dangerous tasks, like this one, involved and, I believe, many that could be made much more efficient. I love to see projects like this making a difference for people doing critical, and often dangerous, blue collar work.

The problem is that the "easy" stuff was assisted if not automated a while ago, the stuff that's always the same and pretty much just requires mechanical muscle.

What's left over tends to be either controlling the stuff, dealing with failures, or work which has enough variance that it's really hard to automate reliably and perfectly.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#20

Post by jxramos »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #2

> The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?

The wiki image is pretty telling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_entrapment

Does not look fun at all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQGfA-0yhk

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