Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 149 posts

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

#41

Post by Houshalter »

bamboozled wrote: post #33
Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the reason they are still so expensive. My observations have been that vegetables are so inexpensive they're often thrown away? Obviously these cheap crops are often grown in a monetarily cheap but environmentally destructive way but I've no idea where you're seeing these expensive vegetables for sale?

I meant expensive in a relative sense. A pound of corn is a few cents, a pound of vegetables is a few dollars (it's far worse when you compare price per calorie.) Maybe expensive is the wrong word to use, but the economic impact of automating this would be quite enormous. And I have seen people complain that eating healthier is more expensive.

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

#42

Post by setr »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #30
Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would starbucks be against lowered supply prices? Either the whole market drops in price and starbucks keeps the same profit margin but lowers actual price, or starbucks just sells the same price but now with higher margins than before

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

#43

Post by agavegoose »

losteric wrote: post #26
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 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?

Something very similar to that has already happened - in (very often hand-weeded) rice, shattering appears to have evolved to de-domesticate the crop - making it essentially impossible for 'weedy' rice to be distinguished from the real thing - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130717132418.h...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2988683/

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

#44

Post by randomdata »

maxerickson wrote: post #36
randomdata wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environment perhaps, but would it really be better for the bottom line? Mechanical weed control already lost out to chemicals because the chemicals were cheaper. On top of that, chemical applicators are relatively simple and proven technology with few moving parts. Farm equipment isn't like your car that can go 100,000 miles without problem. Moving parts on farm equipment will break – constantly . On top of that,…

It only has to be cheap enough to make banning various pesticides reasonable.

You bring up a good point that I forgot about. Some of these chemicals, like Roundup, are not just for pest control, but serve other purposes such as desiccation. Since you are going to need a chemical applicator anyway, a second machine to duplicate functionality further increases the cost ineffectiveness.

Not only that, but what I am sure most would consider the most devastating type of chemical in recent times, neonicotinoids, are applied as a seed treatment, planted with the planter. Even if you could devise an advanced machine that continually keeps pests from eating the seed while it is buried beneath the ground, that requires trips over the field that are currently not required at all. It is tough to compete with no additional trips over the field. Energy and wear is expensive and potentially devastating to the environment, including issues like carbon emissions and topsoil depletion.

(Neonics are already banned where I farm, but it is a good illustration of how chemicals can sometimes eliminate the need for machinery altogether and how the robo-pest terminator has to be able to compete with that)

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

#45

Post by randomdata »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #40
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.

Im on a small hobby farm outside Brisbane. Mid afternoon you want to be inside to get out of the heat. Mornings are prime time to get things done. Or later afteenoon.

> Mid afternoon you want to be inside to get out of the heat.

That's what air conditioning is for!

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

#46

Post by grogenaut »

maxerickson wrote: post #36
randomdata wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environment perhaps, but would it really be better for the bottom line? Mechanical weed control already lost out to chemicals because the chemicals were cheaper. On top of that, chemical applicators are relatively simple and proven technology with few moving parts. Farm equipment isn't like your car that can go 100,000 miles without problem. Moving parts on farm equipment will break – constantly . On top of that,…

It only has to be cheap enough to make banning various pesticides reasonable.

And what price point is that. Pesticides are pretty cheap

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

#47

Post by robotresearcher »

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.

Peter Corke and his huge team at QUT are doing great stuff in this area. They have spot-spraying robots, that zap only weeds and fertilize only crops, and also a great device that just mechanically smashes up weeds one-by-one.

Peter has an admirable ability to choose projects and deliver the goods on them. Robotics needs more like him.

Interview with Corke on this subject:

http://robohub.org/robots-zero-tillage-robotics/

Homepage with free stuff including books and MOOC:

http://petercorke.com/wordpress/

edit: I'm not affiliated with QUT and have no conflict of interest. I'm an academic that does related work but not in agriculture.

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

#48

Post by DesiLurker »

what I am interested in is robots that can reforest unused land. Imagine the possibilities with having armies of robots re-establishing green cover in Amazon delta. kinda like this but with robots:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_GreenHands

good thing is that would be not require nearly as much 'babysitting' as growing crops just ability to charter uneven terrain.

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

#49

Post by maxerickson »

grogenaut wrote: post #46
maxerickson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only has to be cheap enough to make banning various pesticides reasonable.

And what price point is that. Pesticides are pretty cheap

The impact on the final price of the produce matters more than the comparison to pesticides.

Like if pesticides represent 0.1 percent of the retail price of some vegetable, I personally would consider it reasonable to spend 10x avoiding some pesticides. Because it would only have a modest impact at retail.

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

#50

Post by [deleted] »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #30
Houshalter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN