Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides • Hacker News Board

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#71

Post by zo1 » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

So, HN, this looks like really fun and interesting stuff to work on. Any ideas on how a normal developer with a CS background can get into something like this? Either working for this company, or one like it... Or hobby projects that are within a normal person's budget.

Let me know if I should elaborate further and make an Ask HN out of this?

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#72

Post by bglazer » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #71

So, HN, this looks like really fun and interesting stuff to work on. Any ideas on how a normal developer with a CS background can get into something like this? Either working for this company, or one like it... Or hobby projects that are within a normal person's budget. Let me know if I should elaborate further and make an Ask HN out of this?

No idea how to get into this on the company side. Apparently hey use Robotics Operating System (ROS) quite extensively, so you could learn about that (http://www.ros.org/)

On the hobby side, check out farmbot http://farmbot.io/

Re: Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

#73

Post by ars » Mon, Nov 23, 2015, 10:17 PM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #69

ars wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think 100 zaps a second. At very low power, not enough power to kill a plant that has lots of water in it.

Why do you assume low power? :) While you're at it, attach it into a drone. Useful for animal herding and crowd control as well.

> Why do you assume low power? :)

Because outside of a lab, lasers with enough power to zap and destroy 100 plants per second don't actually exist?

(Not that I've done the math, but you really do need a lot of power.)