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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

#71

Post by notatoad »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #42
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…

I've been involved in several IT projects and companies in the agricultural industry over the years. Most people that try to solve agricultural problems with tech are surprised to find that there is far less money in agriculture than they expected and farmers are far less willing to part with it on unproven tech.

There is money in agriculture, but it's not the same sort of money that tech people are used to. Big tech thrives on dumb money - people are willing to make bets on unproven tech in the hopes that it will either make their lives easier or make them look like they are "innovating" to their customers or their bosses.

the medium-scale farms (~10-20 permanent staff + labourers) i have experience with will have no problem making 6-figure purchases if they can do the math and see that the capital investment will pay off in a reasonable amount of time. the money is there, it's just not gambled. there's no value for a farmer in the appearance of innovation.

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

#72

Post by jcims »

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…

Come on man, you don't need to be this rude about a disagreement. You didn't even attempt to contest the primary claim, that farmers aren't going to flock like lemmings to a product that sells safety as its primary benefit.

'Dangerous' is contextual...if the risks of a task can be mitigated with some basic safety process, is it still dangerous? Getting into a grain bin is like rock climbing...go commando and you're playing with death, go in with the right process and gear and you'll be fine. Is it still 'dangerous' then?

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

#73

Post by bluGill »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #58
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…

Most farms are not large corporate. It is one guy and the hired hand farming 3000 acres. Legally they are corporations, but it is still small

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

#74

Post by exporectomy »

celticninja wrote: post #54
rsync wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

This thread is a hilarious game of "I'm better than you because I know real farmers". For some reason, certain occupations seem to bring out a sanctimonious attitude in people that nobody can understand it if they're not personally doing it themselves, combined with a failure to recognize that those occupationists are diverse and one person's personal friends might feel differently from another group or even the majority.

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

#75

Post by bena »

tim333 wrote: post #45
tyingq wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powdered coffee creamer makes impressive fireballs with the distinctive mushroom cloud shape.

Ah so it does - video: https://youtu.be/9pP7mTgX7iw?t=35

That's mostly due to the physics of how it's being aerosolized.

We used to take individual serving packets and do giant flame spikes. We got a large can of it and did the same thing from the top of a stairwell with someone on the bottom floor with a lighter and someone up top with the creamer.

We hadn't fully considered the ramifications of our actions until we saw the fireball coming up at us.

But basically, even without the fire, it would have made the mushroom cloud.

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

#76

Post by jcims »

yupper32 wrote: post #60
gcheong wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gu…

You're climbing on tricky terrain for the fun and challenge of it. They are climbing a large ladder because there isn't an elevator. My brother used to climb poles for his job (may still from time to time). He wouldn't strap his belt round the pole until he got to the top and needed to free up his hands.

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

#77

Post by exporectomy »

bewareandaware wrote: post #15

This seems like another high tech solution looking for a problem. I'm not heavy agriculture savy but it seems to me the same could be solved by having 2 or 3 archimedes screws on the bin which could keep grain moving over time and preventing it from forming the clods. The bot could also be radio controlled and it would still remove the need of a human going in. Another pet peeve of mine is the robot-as-a-service part…

Just be grateful they didn't promote it as being for search and rescue like every robot-solution-looking-for-a-problem that gets invented by academics.

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

#78

Post by msrenee »

bombcar wrote: post #70
msrenee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Being slightly more careful just is using the harness, etc. they don’t do it because it takes time and they’ve done this before and it’ll be fine this time.

It also takes 2 guys and a complete halt of the process. If you could just drop something in there that would do the job, that may actually save money over the long run. Especially if you could keep dispensing while it's working.

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

#79

Post by dreamcompiler »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #6
voisin wrote: post #3

Crazy that this work has been done by hand. I always assumed there would be an augur or something inside.

There are augurs inside, but the grain doesn't always cooperate. Sometimes it clumps up or the augur creates a void, in which case a person has to go in and break up the clumps.

And FWIW the word is auger, which I misspelled.
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