Earlier quoted context omitted.
off the grid, yet with a powered robot?
Plenty of off-grid power options, like solar, wind, and water.
And gasoline.
FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#22As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
As someone who knows nothing about farming or gardening, I'll defer to the points you made as they sound very sensible. But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one (if I had a backyard that is). The thought of a robot that runs on a seasonal calendar that automatically harvests fruits and vegetables for my salad is too cool. To peer out your kitchen window and see a…
> But as a software guy with an interest in salt-of-the-earth hobbies, I'd love to play with one.
Like you said, high-tech outdoors is troublesome. If you want to get a head start on this sort of thing buy an outdoor robot chasis (or make one if you can hold a screwdriver, it'll save you a grand or two). Throw on a kinect, all the cameras you can fit and all the lidar you can afford.
First, teach it what rain is and how to quickly get back to the safety of the charging port. Second, make it navigate around the garden without destroying the plants. Finally, teach it what to look for (pests, damage, ripeness). Don't bother giving it manipulators, just have it log findings and generate reports. When you get home, it can tell you exactly which plants need attention.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#23As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
Yup. I went through the site and I still don't know what problem it solves. Modern ag equipment is scarily efficient and fast. The farmer who's just driving into the field when I leave for work in the morning is towing out carts piled full of corn by the time I get home in the afternoon.
As an aside? How to mechanical harvesters for grapes work without breaking/getting tangled in the wires supporting the vines?
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#24As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
As someone who lived and worked on farms, I agree that they're not practical right now. That said, I'll take on some of your other points.
"there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse" - there are many organic lettuce/greens growers that put lie to this statement.
I don't like the gantry system, mostly because what you stated. Also because it is _extremely_ expensive vs. other methods. If you're doing that, you might as well just put it on wheels and have it drive around.
The radial system can still run more robots - I don't see any restrictions past weight on the arm. It is the equivalent of a circle sprayer, just with robots instead of water.
As for cheap vision/LIDAR, it is most certainly not driven by games. The big Deere tractors are moving away from LIDAR towards sets of stereo cameras because the algorithms are getting better and the cameras are much cheaper and more robust than LIDAR.
I see this device fitting a niche in "black greenhouses" where there aren't any humans involved at all. Totally recycled, totally hermetically sealed environments, like a clean room for plants.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#25As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
As someone who lived and worked on farms, I agree that they're not practical right now. That said, I'll take on some of your other points. "there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse" - there are many organic lettuce/greens growers that put lie to this statement. I don't like the gantry system, mostly because what you stated. Also because it is _extremely_ expensive vs. other methods. If…
Regarding greenhouses, any example you cite I can say is way out of economical norms ;-) But the only way to make organic work (without throwing away half the produce or drowning the field in the few allowable chemicals) is to either do it indoors or in a part of the world where the pests don't exist yet. But that is neither here nor there.
How do you get the extra robots installed on the radial systems? With gantry and wheel based systems, you plop them down at one end of the field and then they re-arrange themselves.
I was specifically thinking the advances in time-of-flight LIDAR that seem to be for short range (several feet) gesture recognition. Not for object avoidance (Deere's use case) but on the wrist of a manipulator, where you don't always have the space for a stereo-optical setup.
One day hermetic greenhouses might make sense. Until then it will be cheaper and (arguably) less impactful to grow the veg someplace with reasonable weather and pests and ship it instead.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#26As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
Yup. I went through the site and I still don't know what problem it solves. Modern ag equipment is scarily efficient and fast . The farmer who's just driving into the field when I leave for work in the morning is towing out carts piled full of corn by the time I get home in the afternoon. As an aside? How to mechanical harvesters for grapes work without breaking/getting tangled in the wires supporting the vines?
You need to spend the rest of the year pruning and training the canes to be harvester friendly. The harvester itself shakes and beats the berries off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv-AnyvWL7g around 38 seconds in.
Quality is questionable, as it will also harvest the unripe secondary clusters and any rot. (There are probably visual systems for cleaning these out.)
Grapes (and a lot of perennial fruits) are a little oddball in this discussion though, because they are very low impact. For example, you rarely (maybe once when first planting) have to till or fertilize or spray for weeds and we've got plenty of biodiversity in the turf.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#27As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
I can't read the whitepaper due to work network restrictions (scribd? really?) but superficially this seems more directed towards DIY-er gardener types rather than industrial farming. That is to say, people who have no need for a giant combine harvester.
For that purpose it seems to have the capability to automate some tedious jobs quite nicely. I would pay for a machine that grows vegetables in my backyard with little to no input from me.
That said, the possum remover must be the most hilariously bad job in farming.
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#28As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
I can see it applied in the right place.
check out this short video on vertical farms in Singapore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFQOkzEjxQ
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#29As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
I can see it applied in the right place. check out this short video on vertical farms in Singapore http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFQOkzEjxQ
Okay, that is pretty awesome. Some thoughts... greens are probably optimal for this because they are fast to go from seed to produce. And 100% of the output can be sold, with basically no wastes. Singapore is also optimal for greenhouses. The temperature there is 23C-32C year round, so you don't need HVAC (just air filters on your vent fans) and you can grow continuously.
The waterwheel thing is clever not for the energy efficiency (it'll be the same regardless) but because it greatly reduces the amount of mechanics/electronics that are exposed to the greenhouse humidity, greatly improving reliability. (Installation cost is probably the same as if you had a gearmotor on every tower, just because the funny waterwheel is probably not an OTS part.)
But even in the video they call it a "premium novelty for consumers", which basically means not yet economical. And who knows how much of it was backed by the mentioned incentives. (They show some prices at 5:12 and 5:41, maybe that can give an idea.)
Re: FarmBot: Open-source automated farming machine
#30As someone who does farming (part time), I don't see these being practical. For low value bulk crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) the robot is too expensive and existing mechanization is too good. Even for high value stuff (grapes and other fruit) it will be too expensive. Maybe inside a highly controlled greenhouse this will be practical, but there are no food crops that are economical to grow inside a greenhouse. (It is…
I can't read the whitepaper due to work network restrictions (scribd? really?) but superficially this seems more directed towards DIY-er gardener types rather than industrial farming. That is to say, people who have no need for a giant combine harvester. For that purpose it seems to have the capability to automate some tedious jobs quite nicely. I would pay for a machine that grows vegetables in my backyard with litt…
They've probably fixed the possum thing by now :-)
Your comment makes me wonder what a good pricepoint would be for such a system. How much money and how much space would you be willing to give up, for example.
Less hypothetically, why the fixation on machines? We've got all sorts of crazy services these days. How much would you be willing to pay for a gardening service that maintains your garden for you and occasionally leaves a crate of produce at your backdoor? It would be like a lawn service, but without all the terrible effects on the local ecology.