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Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

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Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#41

Post by onion2k »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical. To do the 20 acres they're talking about you'd need one hell of a huge battery, assuming it's electric. Even just to move the thing. Then add power draw for the laser on as well. Also seems odd to have it be something that is self-powered and autonomous rather than just something you pull behind a tractor on the three point hitc…

There's a video on YouTube of a walk around. https://youtu.be/fK3AQgt47z4 The CEO of the company describes it as "an all diesel hydraulic system." Essentially there's a big generator to drive it around and provide power to the pew pew lasers.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#42

Post by retSava »

retro64 wrote: post #26

This is very cool. Not knowing anything about it though it looks massive and overbuilt (with smallish wheels, but likely just fine for the time of year it's put to use). Anyone care to speculate why it needs such a large body? The width is a given because it needs to span the rows, but why a giant cube?

I assume ventilation is a big factor, big fans to cool the lasers. Probably some form of liquid cooling with pumps and coolant media tubes and whatnot.

Really cool product!

I think what this product may lack if anything, is some RGB LED lighting and a name with X or Z in it, eg "CarbonX LASER-Z". Especially now with eSports increasing popularity, perhaps we may find eFarmingSports finding a niche, where the most zapped weeds per time unit wins.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#43

Post by meepmorp »

wombat-man wrote: post #32
ransom1538 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical." Meh. Worse case you could even have a wire.

Hell, you could probably stick a fuel tank and a generator on it if you had to.

Which is basically what they did; upthread, someone links to the specs and they have an onboard Cummins diesel generator.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#44

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical. To do the 20 acres they're talking about you'd need one hell of a huge battery, assuming it's electric. Even just to move the thing. Then add power draw for the laser on as well. Also seems odd to have it be something that is self-powered and autonomous rather than just something you pull behind a tractor on the three point hitc…

Farming equipment is typically fuel based. And this appears to be the case for this robot as well: it uses Diesel.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#46

Post by piyh »

ceejayoz wrote: post #2

It's all fun and games until the selection pressure evolves weeds that say "human" on their leaves to fool the AI.

Farming goes from broad selection against pests with chemicals to introducing a massive selection pressure towards biological mimicry and adversarial image attacks.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#47

Post by tw04 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical. To do the 20 acres they're talking about you'd need one hell of a huge battery, assuming it's electric. Even just to move the thing. Then add power draw for the laser on as well. Also seems odd to have it be something that is self-powered and autonomous rather than just something you pull behind a tractor on the three point hitc…

>Also seems odd to have it be something that is self-powered and autonomous rather than just something you pull behind a tractor on the three point hitch

That doesn't seem odd to me at all. The whole point of this thing is to let it run all day killing weeds while you do other stuff. The fact it only has a max of 5mph (and likely significantly slower when there are actual weeds to kill) means you would spend all day every day in the field trying to take care of weeds.

When they spray for weeds they're going significantly faster than that and cover a massive swath in one pass, and that's generally outsourced to someone other than the farmer himself. This looks like it's good for maybe 3 rows at a time.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#48

Post by underseacables »

There is a reckoning coming when agricultural robots will overtake manual labor. This is going to lead to a giant calamity of agricultural workers, specifically migrant workers, who are suddenly going to be without a job. I love the robots, I think it’s great, but we should be prepared for a human concern that WILL come.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#49

Post by garrettgrimsley »

ransom1538 wrote: post #25
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #20

I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical. To do the 20 acres they're talking about you'd need one hell of a huge battery, assuming it's electric. Even just to move the thing. Then add power draw for the laser on as well. Also seems odd to have it be something that is self-powered and autonomous rather than just something you pull behind a tractor on the three point hitc…

"I want to see details on power source and energy usage. That's where I'm a bit skeptical." Meh. Worse case you could even have a wire.

You’d be dragging that wire over your rows of crops, potentially damaging them.

Re: Farming robot kills 100k weeds per hour with lasers

#50

Post by gpm »

retro64 wrote: post #26

This is very cool. Not knowing anything about it though it looks massive and overbuilt (with smallish wheels, but likely just fine for the time of year it's put to use). Anyone care to speculate why it needs such a large body? The width is a given because it needs to span the rows, but why a giant cube?

It sounds like it's got a generator on board, so it needs enough space for that.

There's no sense letting it get rained on, so it needs some sort of cap (especially given that it's presumably electric high powered lasers).

It doesn't seem to move fast enough to care about wind resistance.

A cube is a nice easy shape to build... so why not a cube.

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