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

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

#21

Post by ekianjo »

samstave wrote: post #11
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nobo…

> 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.

As far as I know SpaceX is focusing on sending "stuff" to Mars, not just humans. Humans are better than robots in many ways though, as in they can do a lot of more versatile stuff. We can build rovers to explore and take pictures, but building a robot that can mimic the palette of actions of a typical human is far beyond our reach at the moment.

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

#22

Post by abakker »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
abakker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 homeste…

Automation provides the masses neither the automatons nor the land. It could make coops marginally better at producing, but it would cost money the coop doesn't have to buy the robots and systems, and would still be constrained by land and fertilizer. Labor just doesn't matter that much to yield.

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

#23

Post by QAPereo »

ModernMech wrote: post #20
gbrown wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

So basically ladybugs, but with a profit margin and TOS.

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

#24

Post by shanev »

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.

We are destroying topsoil at an alarming rate due to industrial farming that we may have no choice but to go this route.

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

#26

Post by losteric »

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 am interested to see how the pest ecosystem evolves in response to robotic "predators"... Can insects evolve effective camouflage? Will weeds evolve to mimic cash crops? How will fungi/bacteria/viruses respond to a lack of other pests?

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

#27

Post by toomuchtodo »

abakker wrote: post #22
toomuchtodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 homeste…

Automation provides the masses neither the automatons nor the land. It could make coops marginally better at producing, but it would cost money the coop doesn't have to buy the robots and systems, and would still be constrained by land and fertilizer. Labor just doesn't matter that much to yield.

Indeed the initial capital needs to come from somewhere, although I will argue that technology creates a deflationary spiral allowing automatons to be acquired cheaper than traditional tooling. Witness Tesla able to sell a $35k base EV that is superior to quite a few internal combustion vehicles on the market, with that price only going down as battery manufacturing scales up.

"The students involved in the Hands Free Hectare project also suggest that this was probably “the most expensive hectare of barley ever,” with an overall budget of £200,000 from the U.K. government. Moonshots like this are understandably expensive, though, and since a huge chunk of that money went to capital costs (like buying a tractor and a harvester), the next crop will be vastly cheaper."

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

#28

Post by akgerber »

While in rural Japan, I noticed a lot of tiny combine rice harvesters in tiny rice paddies, as opposed to mega-scale American agriculture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#/media/File:Rice-combine-...

Perhaps these would be a model for smaller autonomous combines.

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

#30

Post by chiefofgxbxl »

Houshalter wrote: post #19
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 the…

> 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.

Same deal with coffee beans, which contributes to their higher price. The coffee beans do not ripen at the same time, so they must be hand-picked so the worker can identify which ones are ready. Lots of manual labor.

And with coffee being so widely consumed, savings here would easily be felt by a lot of people, although I doubt Starbucks would like it...

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