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

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

#71

Post by oh_sigh »

randomdata wrote: post #16
oh_sigh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that is because the farmers have access to huge fields which let them deploy their equipment efficiently. Autonomous farming would let you theoretically use more marginal lands which are not currently suitable for manual farming.

I expect you are suggesting that small parcels of land that are far away from large fields are not worth the travel expenses? I'm not sure that robots really improve on that, as fuel, wear and tear, etc. going field to field remain a big detractor. There are plenty of farmers who do it for fun. They'd be happy to spend the time in the machine if labour costs were the only reason to avoid those fields. I already farm…

Not necessarily small - mostly marginal(I should have mentioned that it wasn't necessarily sheer size of field, but something like size*quality in my original post). I don't agree with your characterization about farmers doing it for fun. I'm sure there are a lot of people, say, within 10 miles of a major city who would farm for fun, but outside of that radius you mostly have people who either already have farms or manually farm on their own house plot.

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

#72

Post by stevenwoo »

samstave wrote: post #11
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will take way longer than 100 years to gey an atmosphere ready to grow earth crops on Mars, if at all possible.

I know that, I was putting a random number. Regardless, we could still have a fleet of robots go build structures there, then another that will grow things in the structures... We talk about sending men to mars, but I think it's short-sighted to not first figure out how to send and deploy resources and robots to pre-build infrastructure for said humans - and we should be practicing on the moon. Or why is it that nobo…

I thought that we're really not sure if even the dust on either our moon or Mar is that compatible with human life. This article is more than ten years old so we possibly have newer data on Mars at least. http://www.airspacemag.com/space/stronger-than-dirt-8944228/

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

#73

Post by zaroth »

randomdata wrote: post #44
maxerickson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ne…

I think it's a myth that Roundup is used as a desiccant.

However the robots are not trying to replace chemicals. As you point out, that's a losing proposition. But they can definitely reduce overall man-hours, and so provide constant value as long as they operate.

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

#74

Post by dejv »

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.

Insects are never gonna be killed mechanically, those are too small and too many in count. Modern trend is to use biological controll: you "plant" organism that eat them or eat their eggs.

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

#75

Post by uuilly »

randomdata wrote: post #35
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.

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,…

Yup. A few days ago we (60 people) got bought by John Deere for $305M b/c our machine reduced herbicides by 90% using CV/ML. Our only moving part was a solenoid. Would not have survived if it had been more complicated. You clearly get it.

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

#76

Post by jefflombardjr »

losteric wrote: post #39
jefflombardjr wrote: post #25

Do this for small scale non-monoculture farming and I will be impressed. This is just a marginal productivity gain for factory farming.

You're right... it's just like how early commercial computers were productivity gains for large corporations. New tech is expensive and not very good - only big businesses see positive ROI. As some technology matures, it becomes a commodity for everyone. Small farms could go do this right now. It just wouldn't make financial sense.

Yeah I mean if you think improving ethanol and malt production is cool.

As far as actual food I'm more impressed by small scale open source farm bot projects and some of the innovative stuff permaculturists are doing without tech.

Factory farmers = Microsoft/Windows

Small scale farmers = Open Source/Linux

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

#77

Post by dejv »

burger_moon wrote: post #65
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…

Some of my family members drive truck at farms during harvest and I've rode along a lot. The guy driving the combine can mostly be automated except the part of having to stop and clear out metal or other jams that stop them. The machines have sensors which shut them down instantly when they detect metal because the cutter is expensive as hell. Not sure there's really a way to automate that. There's a lot of other les…

I had one vineyard planted this year using fully automatic planter using gps and laser mavigation. There was driver inside, but he was just a controller: once he moved few cm out of the path whole thing just shut down and he had to drive back to spot.

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

#78

Post by njarboe »

lightedman wrote: post #68
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.

"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. " Why bother with that when we already have controlled facilities where pests simply can't gain a foot hold in the first place, making that labor totally unnecessary?

Greenhouse the entire mid-west? With big enough structures to run tractors? Not sure the ROI is going to work out.

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

#79

Post by njarboe »

thomas_howland wrote: post #52
Alex3917 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output is minimal already What crops have the highest labor costs, in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of what the consumer pays?

Hand-harvestable-only crops like lettuce and tomatoes. Basically the CA Central Valley.

The Salinas valley is where most of the lettuce comes from. Quite a bit cooler than the central valley. Baby greens harvesting is highly automated. A nice picture here: http://www.hortech.it/en/cp/agricultural-machineries-for-har...

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

#80

Post by jamiegreen »

thomas_howland wrote: post #51
shanev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are destroying topsoil at an alarming rate due to industrial farming that we may have no choice but to go this route.

We are absolutely not. Productive farmland in the USA is fairly expensive and farmers are extremely interested in preserving its value. Most "destroyed" topsoil is due to eg suburban developments spreading into former agricultural areas, but it's still minimal in the grand scheme of things.

"One-third of world’s soils are degraded: FAO"

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/NVc4UYKzFxn8zeQqkydyPM/Onet...

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