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A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

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Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#51

Post by rsync »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #18

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting…

"To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them."

I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin.

If you climb into an enclosed space with both burial and dust explosion hazards and your internal alarms aren't going off loud and strong ... you are, sadly, an idiot.

Most of the people I know who handle tasks like this are not idiots.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#52

Post by dylan604 »

the-pigeon wrote: post #41
Baeocystin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who knows farmers- they do, in fact, consider going into the silo a dangerous task, because everyone knows some family that had someone die because of it. They do it anyway, because it needs to get done, but they are quite aware of the risk. Everything on a farm has to earn its keep in terms of ROI, and so will this robot. It may or may not be cost effective, and we'll see. But please don't downpl…

The entire idea that "x workers don't care about safety" is just dumb. Yes some individuals care less than they should. But every job has some people who are smart enough to value their own safety. And those people will seriously consider any device the significantly increases safety.

>Yes some individuals care less than they should.

Is it really an amount of "care", or that some people just have an ability to not get bogged down by the scary stuff. There would be no X-Games at all if we were all wired the same. There are people that voluntarilly get off of their motorcycle at the apex of their jump to score some extra points. That's beyond insane to me, but to them it's part of the job.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#53

Post by msrenee »

legitster wrote: post #37
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #18

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting…

Preach. On the internet it's very easy for people to talk themselves into incredibly high standards for anything. But in real life most people are pretty astute at marginal trade-offs between risk and cost. While it may look like you have a product with no competitors that will save lives, your actual competitor is "being slightly more careful" and it's free and people still aren't buying that . You still have to jus…

Being slightly more careful doesn't really help in this situation. They are slightly more careful. The smart ones are very careful. It's intrinsically dangerous. Someone suggested a tag out system and that just makes it clear to me they don't understand the mechanics at hand. Why more of them don't wear a harness, tie off, and the buddy system, I don't know, but that's about the only real way you can recover if you get sucked in.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#54

Post by celticninja »

rsync wrote: post #51
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #18

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting…

"To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them." I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin. If you climb into an enclosed space with both burial and dust explosion hazards and your internal alarms aren't going off…

I agree. The first paragraph of the article contains their reasoning behind creating it. An experienced farmer asked them to create something so that he (and his children) never had to expose themselves to that risk again. They know it is dangerous, they may manage that risk but you are a fool if you think they would prefer to run the risk rather than find a safer alternative.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#55

Post by celticninja »

nimbius wrote: post #50
Baeocystin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who knows farmers- they do, in fact, consider going into the silo a dangerous task, because everyone knows some family that had someone die because of it. They do it anyway, because it needs to get done, but they are quite aware of the risk. Everything on a farm has to earn its keep in terms of ROI, and so will this robot. It may or may not be cost effective, and we'll see. But please don't downpl…

"Blue-collar" worker here. safety is the first trade we learn in school and the first job we start at every site. Your real uphill battle with this thing isnt going to be safety, its repair. Can I fix it with a stick welder and parts from a Tractor Supply? If not, its just another John Deere money machine. If you REALLY want farmers to use it, make it OPEN SOURCE.

Doesn't have to be open source, just needs to be repairable on site, not in a week's time when someone comes out to it. In that time someone has to risk their life to do the job it should be doing.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#56

Post by atum47 »

Just saw an article on Reddit in how dangerous this is. Back in college I was being asked to develop a project to a rice factory, so I went there several times. In one occasion a worker fell in one of those grain bin and died a slowly death. Scary as heck.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#58

Post by LeifCarrotson »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #18

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting…

It's one thing to take your safety into your own hands when it's your backyard. It's another thing to decline to implement procedures and safety measures that put someone else's life at risk.

The romantic notion of the old man and his sons wringing out an existence on the family 40 is rapidly disappearing. Most of the grain production in the US is from massive farming corporations with tens of thousands of acres. At that kind of farm, there's a company mission statement that you hope has "Safety First" somewhere. There's someone in an office looking at hazards their workers encounter and ensuring they're OSHA-compliant, and doing risk analyses to find the most effective way to reduce risk and maintain productivity. A few miles away, there's a farm hand considering climbing into the company grain bin not because he'll personally benefit from shipping a harvest, he's at a $10.25 hourly rate regardless of the content of the bin, but he needs this paycheck to avoid his house being foreclosed upon and there are no non-farming jobs within 40 miles.

It's the office worker who is responsible for dozens of grain bins, each containing a quarter million dollars worth of grain, who is deciding whether to risk someone else's life or buy equipment instead.

I'm not in farming (though I have family who is), I'm in manufacturing automation, and the same safety guidelines apply. The risks I'm willing to take with my Sawzall in my backyard are not the same as what I can ask some minimum-wage line operator to stand in front of. That person doesn't really have a choice in the risks they're exposed to. I get to choose those risks, and I have a moral, ethical, and legal responsibility to minimize them. If there's a maintenance task that puts workers in a potentially dangerous area of the workcell, I'm not sending them in unprepared. I'm probably going to spend thousands on floor scanners, safety controllers, lockout/tagout energy shutoffs, and other risk mitigations to make it as safe as reasonably possible, and if I can skip those requirements and have a machine do the task instead that's an easy calculation to make.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#59

Post by toxik »

gcheong wrote: post #46
djmips wrote: post #23

If grain bins are dangerous to go inside, maybe there's a low tech solution like safety lines attached to a belt similar to mountain climbing or high rise construction.

Then you have to gear up, which takes time, and maybe you only have to go in for a little bit to clear something, and also now you are tethered which may hinder your mobility and could in itself become a hazard. I recall something I read about people who work in high places like antenna towers would often rather do away with the harness if safety regulations allowed as they find it tedious to be unhooking and rehooki…

Why don’t they just basically lead climb their way up? Seems like it’d be a decent compromise.

Re: A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin

#60

Post by yupper32 »

gcheong wrote: post #46
djmips wrote: post #23

If grain bins are dangerous to go inside, maybe there's a low tech solution like safety lines attached to a belt similar to mountain climbing or high rise construction.

Then you have to gear up, which takes time, and maybe you only have to go in for a little bit to clear something, and also now you are tethered which may hinder your mobility and could in itself become a hazard. I recall something I read about people who work in high places like antenna towers would often rather do away with the harness if safety regulations allowed as they find it tedious to be unhooking and rehooki…

> I recall something I read about people who work in high places like antenna towers would often rather do away with the harness if safety regulations allowed as they find it tedious to be unhooking and rehooking every few steps up the ladder.

As a rock climber I find this comment absurd if true. Unless the number is extremely small.

I also find rigging a multi-pitch anchor and keeping ropes untangled tedious. But guess what: that keeps me alive! Sure there are some who climb without ropes, but that's an extremely small number of people.

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