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Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

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Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#51

Post by spdionis »

kbenson wrote: post #48
whoiskevin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For as long as I live where a lawn does not require a sprinkler. Think outside the box.

So we are all stuck with an outdated concept that originated from aristocratic landowners who wanted to show how much money they had by devoting a portion of their estate to not growing crops and just being manicured because you can do it without watering? How very kind of you to epitomize the "get off my lawn" meme, but I'm not on your lawn. I'm not telling you to get rid of your lawn, but the concept as it exists n…

Lawns look nice. Sounds like a good enough reason to keep them. We are not THAT overpopulated.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#52

Post by BurningFrog »

visarga wrote: post #44
toyg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but to be fair, you could even skip that and just have a remote pilot looking at the rolling video feed and clicking on targets. It still beats having people actually walking under the sun and ruining their backs to pull out weed, or blanketing with herbicide. I'm not so sure punching is a great solution though. Weed is incredibly good at reforming from very very small bits left standing.

> you could even skip that and just have a remote pilot looking at the rolling video feed and clicking on targets. Then you could use that video to train a network to find weeds and get rid of the operator. You could also test the network a part of the same dataset to see how well it finds the right spots.

This will create weed breeds that look more and more indistinguishable from the crops.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#53

Post by staticint »

barney54 wrote: post #31

How many years until a robot like this will cut your grass, weed the lawn, and weed your flowerbeds?

Zero years for the first one.

* https://www.bosch-garden.com/gb/en/garden-tools/indego-home....

* https://www.deere.com/en_INT/products/equipment/autonomous_m...

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#54

Post by aaron695 »

icelancer wrote: post #26
aaron695 wrote: post #25

It's a good example of how play in the future will also go the way of jobs. Why garden when your neighbors will have amazing gardens cheaply designed and looked after by robots. And it'll be smart, it'll know exactly how many weeds to leave so it doesn't look to perfect, exactly when to plant and pollinate, order things online when needed.

The journey is as much fun as the end product. Usually moreso in these cases.

This is the problem, robots are killing the journey.

To take your point literally

Like jobs, at first it's great, highways, planes, easy to access information open up the world to everyone.

But it'll get to the stage where it's too easy. Adventures are getting harder to have. You no longer find that amazing restaurants, you yelp them and book months in advance.

In the future when you're chatting to someone about visiting county X and you realise they have only been there virtually it'll perhaps devalue your own journey, then perhaps you'll get what I mean.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#55

Post by joeblow99 »

kbenson wrote: post #48
whoiskevin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For as long as I live where a lawn does not require a sprinkler. Think outside the box.

So we are all stuck with an outdated concept that originated from aristocratic landowners who wanted to show how much money they had by devoting a portion of their estate to not growing crops and just being manicured because you can do it without watering? How very kind of you to epitomize the "get off my lawn" meme, but I'm not on your lawn. I'm not telling you to get rid of your lawn, but the concept as it exists n…

Sounds like the meme has already gotten to you so its clearly happening.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#56

Post by a_bonobo »

BurningFrog wrote: post #52
visarga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could even skip that and just have a remote pilot looking at the rolling video feed and clicking on targets. Then you could use that video to train a network to find weeds and get rid of the operator. You could also test the network a part of the same dataset to see how well it finds the right spots.

This will create weed breeds that look more and more indistinguishable from the crops.

Funny enough, this has may have already happened - Darnel was probably domesticated around the same time as wheat, and now it looks pretty much like wheat. There's a chance that humans accidentally swept it up when they domesticated wheat. The problem is that Darnel is psychotoxic and ingestion in the worst case can lead to a coma.

Possibly locked review: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-13145-5...

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#57

Post by jhallenworld »

Parts of my family are in the bedding plant / greenhouse business. One cool technology is the transplanting machine. This transfers seedlings from "plug trays" to "flats" and replaces an assembly line of ladies doing this work. Here is one design:

http://www.hamilton-design.co.uk/transplanter.html

The ones they actually used were the "Harrison Transplanter".. could not find a video, but here is one http://bid.sheridanauctionservice.com/images/lot/3471/347193...

Harrison is neighbor of ours who worked at Brookhaven National Labs but then became an entrepreneur. He sold a bunch of them.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#58

Post by Dylan16807 »

aaron695 wrote: post #54
icelancer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journey is as much fun as the end product. Usually moreso in these cases.

This is the problem, robots are killing the journey. To take your point literally Like jobs, at first it's great, highways, planes, easy to access information open up the world to everyone. But it'll get to the stage where it's too easy. Adventures are getting harder to have. You no longer find that amazing restaurants, you yelp them and book months in advance. In the future when you're chatting to someone about visi…

You know people still walk right?

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#59

Post by brc »

spdionis wrote: post #51
kbenson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are all stuck with an outdated concept that originated from aristocratic landowners who wanted to show how much money they had by devoting a portion of their estate to not growing crops and just being manicured because you can do it without watering? How very kind of you to epitomize the "get off my lawn" meme, but I'm not on your lawn. I'm not telling you to get rid of your lawn, but the concept as it exists n…

Lawns look nice. Sounds like a good enough reason to keep them. We are not THAT overpopulated.

They also stop erosion, provide habitat for insects and animals and are pleasing to walk on.

I get having a lawn in a desert is a poor use of water, but for many houses and recreational areas, it's an excellent way to cover ground.

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#60

Post by ars »

BurningFrog wrote: post #52
visarga wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could even skip that and just have a remote pilot looking at the rolling video feed and clicking on targets. Then you could use that video to train a network to find weeds and get rid of the operator. You could also test the network a part of the same dataset to see how well it finds the right spots.

This will create weed breeds that look more and more indistinguishable from the crops.

To get "more and more" you have to have a weed that triggers a partial response from the machine.

This works with a chemical - i.e. an accidental low dose, but I don't see how that would happen with this machine.

If, you had a weed that was so close to the crop it was only sometimes recognized then yes, but weeds mostly look nothing at all like the crop.

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