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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

#101

Post by rsync »

perl4ever wrote: post #97
rsync wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin. If you climb into an enclosed space with both burial and dust explosion hazards and your internal alarms aren't going off…

Instead of using the word "idiot", I think it's probably better to describe people who refused to give up small scale farming over the course of the 20th century as...very stubborn, used to doing everything themselves to save money and ignoring risks (to themselves and family) that a big employer can't possibly get away with today. If you've ever read "Farmer Boy" about Almanzo Wilder, there's a bit where his father…

"Instead of using the word "idiot", I think it's probably better to describe people ..."

Please re-read - I said:

"Most of the people I know who handle tasks like this are not idiots."

I was disputing my parents assertion that "... (things like this are) not a dangerous task to them." I think my parent is incorrect.

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

#102

Post by Semiapies »

I'm kind of fascinated by how many comments in here are of the "Gee, why use something so complicated? Why not just tie on a rope if you go in the silo?" variety.

The inability to imagine that people who aren't tech bros can and actually do sensible things to address problems they encounter--and that some of their problems might still be harder to solve than coding a signup form--is impressive.

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

#103

Post by Pxtl »

Animats wrote: post #40

About 30 people a year are entrapped in grain bins. About half die. Generally, someone goes inside a grain bin only because something has gone wrong. Which is when it's most dangerous. [1] https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-death-4-ways-...

This sounds like typical heavy industry stuff, but I guess a lot of the normal practices of heavy industry aren't as common in the ag sector.

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

#104

Post by toomanybeersies »

dylan604 wrote: post #52
the-pigeon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire idea that "x workers don't care about safety" is just dumb. Yes some individuals care less than they should. But every job has some people who are smart enough to value their own safety. And those people will seriously consider any device the significantly increases safety.

>Yes some individuals care less than they should. Is it really an amount of "care", or that some people just have an ability to not get bogged down by the scary stuff. There would be no X-Games at all if we were all wired the same. There are people that voluntarilly get off of their motorcycle at the apex of their jump to score some extra points. That's beyond insane to me , but to them it's part of the job.

Maybe I'm just a dirty socialist, but I don't really want to die in a preventable industrial accident, all because my employer didn't want to invest in workplace health and safety.

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

#105

Post by megablast »

nimbius wrote: post #50
Baeocystin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who knows farmers- they do, in fact, consider going into the silo a dangerous task, because everyone knows some family that had someone die because of it. They do it anyway, because it needs to get done, but they are quite aware of the risk. Everything on a farm has to earn its keep in terms of ROI, and so will this robot. It may or may not be cost effective, and we'll see. But please don't downpl…

"Blue-collar" worker here. safety is the first trade we learn in school and the first job we start at every site. Your real uphill battle with this thing isnt going to be safety, its repair. Can I fix it with a stick welder and parts from a Tractor Supply? If not, its just another John Deere money machine. If you REALLY want farmers to use it, make it OPEN SOURCE.

Clearly not true. The safest thing you can do on a worksite is leave. But people still work there.

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

#106

Post by Pxtl »

gcheong wrote: post #63
yupper32 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recall something I read about people who work in high places like antenna towers would often rather do away with the harness if safety regulations allowed as they find it tedious to be unhooking and rehooking every few steps up the ladder. As a rock climber I find this comment absurd if true. Unless the number is extremely small. I also find rigging a multi-pitch anchor and keeping ropes untangled tedious. But gu…

Life is full of absurdities apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO6YiImtMXM

... that is impressively hostile design. I would think the ladders would be have a cable alongside so a climber could attach a hitch or a ratchet wheel or something that wouldn't need to be re-hooked every rung but would still brake in the event of fall.

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

#107

Post by spyder »

bewareandaware wrote: post #15

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…

Yep, that was my first thought as an outsider and of course it's already used in those bins, it's more heavy-duty, faster, probably more expensive to install but more effective than a small robot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRISXr_euWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vm5jSAmVe0

They still have to get inside sometimes (less than without them) to fix it but it's the same with the robot if it's get stuck or battery dies.

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

#108

Post by 1123581321 »

Semiapies wrote: post #102

I'm kind of fascinated by how many comments in here are of the "Gee, why use something so complicated? Why not just tie on a rope if you go in the silo?" variety. The inability to imagine that people who aren't tech bros can and actually do sensible things to address problems they encounter--and that some of their problems might still be harder to solve than coding a signup form--is impressive.

1. Not many comments are like that.

2. Many (most?) users here do more complex programming work than just signup forms.

3. Not everyone has the privilege of being familiar with both ag and programming. Plus, there are a lot of young users here. Today, a few people are learning more about silo safety. What’s impressive about that?

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

#110

Post by baryphonic »

exporectomy wrote: post #74
celticninja wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The first paragraph of the article contains their reasoning behind creating it. An experienced farmer asked them to create something so that he (and his children) never had to expose themselves to that risk again. They know it is dangerous, they may manage that risk but you are a fool if you think they would prefer to run the risk rather than find a safer alternative.

This thread is a hilarious game of "I'm better than you because I know real farmers". For some reason, certain occupations seem to bring out a sanctimonious attitude in people that nobody can understand it if they're not personally doing it themselves, combined with a failure to recognize that those occupationists are diverse and one person's personal friends might feel differently from another group or even the majo…

I must say, I find this response a bit odd. Just for reference, a billionaire US presidential candidate last year said[0]:

> I could teach anybody—even people in this room so no offense intended—to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.

I've seen this kind of attitude toward lower-status occupations from fellow engineers and other educated professional types, and I find it distasteful. Unlike some other occupations which also provoke a "sanctimonious attitude" (such as, say, education, despite almost all of us having extensive experience with it as a consumer or product or something), farming seems like a blind spot for almost all educated professionals. I know I'm profoundly ignorant of how all of the different types of food I eat are produced. Everything I learn about the field - and I'm not naturally interested in it - makes me feel even more uninformed about all of the factors that go into producing and distributing food. That indicates to me that farmers, whom we depend on, absolutely deserve some respect and deference. When a common sentiment among this class is that farming can be reduced to simply putting some dirt over a hole with a seed inside, knowing an actual farmer is probably pretty valuable, even if that farmer isn't representative of farmers as a whole. Farming seems to be one of the few occupations where this "sanctimonious attitude" seems justifiable.

[0]https://www.newsweek.com/mike-bloombergs-elitist-farming-com...

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