4 ms·

Slightly off topic but had 2 questions. The last part reminded me of google training a bunch of robot arms [1]. Haven't seen much being done with it, does anyo

Slightly off topic but had 2 questions. The last part reminded me of google training a bunch of robot arms [1]. Haven't seen much being done with it, does anyone know if anything is being done with the data? We don't really know how much of each resources it takes to grow something. How much oxygen does 1 tomato plant take? I think growing in space would require one to investigate such questions in more detail. Ever since I came across ML and DL, I wondered if there was a way to train a deepFarmer. Something that understands relations between minerals nutrients and the fruiting body. Sometimes you want to grow stuff that might have less of certain stuff but you want more off it. Eg: low calorie high volume foods. Or you might want high protein food. If an "AI" could figure out how to maximize vitamin C for example in tomato for a population that needs more of that vs it learns to make the tomato more water rich for some other reason. AI is interesting. [1] https://research.googleblog.com/2016/03/deep-learning-for-robots-learning-from.html https://research.googleblog.com/2016/03/deep-learning-for-ro... Edit: Forgot link

hedgehog 10y ago
On the agriculture topic NASA has been working in this area for a while: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/biofarming.html https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/biofarming.html As I understand it growing crops in a small, sealed environment requires much more precise understanding of how plants behave than you do for traditional Earth-bound farming.
- itchyjunk 10y ago
  Ah, interesting. I know NASA were doing some research in aeroponics [1] but I haven't seen anything recent on it. Lot of commercial systems I see don't have a lot of research behind but they are still getting better yields I think. I also saw an old but interesting system from MIT [2]. It would be very useful to mine data from these to train ML systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics [2] http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/
fnbr 10y ago
I've spoken to a few people who are interested in applying machine learning to hydroponic farming with the aim of creating vertical farms. If you could isolate the different rooms sufficiently, you could run machine learning to optimise yield (or Vitamin C). I have doubts as to the commercial viability of this, as farming is pretty low margin, so the overhead requirements for the capital expenditures would require pretty substantial gains in efficiency, which I think just don't exist.
- contingencies 10y ago
  I have at least one serious potential investor ready for anyone attempting this (vertical farming automation). Also, I am interested to cooperate on creating reliable contracted urban demand without the need for retail packaging - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ - currently relocating to Shenzhen. If automated urban vertical farming happens it will probably happen in China because dense/cheap/economies of scale/rising food prices/rapid urbanization/transition toward smaller households/cultural preference for fresh and less processed foods/less regulatory issues.
  - simonrobb 10y ago
    Why vertical farming specifically? No doubt vertical farming will form part of the solution to feeding urban populations in the coming decades, but the area covered by open-air "horizontal" farming is immense. We just can't do construction on that scale, not to mention the incredible environmental impacts. Growing things with LEDs seems pretty wasteful when we have a great big star shining down on us all day. Vertical farming will bring fresh food to high-density populations for sure, it just isn't going to change the face of farming across the planet. Although it's a much more difficult problem to solve being an uncontrolled environment, my company is working on this automation but for traditional farms (http://touch.farm http://touch.farm). The first step is gathering rich data from different crops/climates, which is why we're starting by designing the cheapest and most usable ag sensors we can. If we can make sensor tech accessible to a wide range of farmers, we'll gain a rich enough dataset to start applying ML (and farmers and the environment win in the process). tl;dr: vertical farming is great, but what we really need is innovation/investment in traditional farming.
ericjang 10y ago
> The last part reminded me of google training a bunch of robot arms [1]. Haven't seen much being done with it, does anyone know if anything is being done with the data? The data gathered using aforementioned robot arms is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/brainrobotdata/home https://sites.google.com/site/brainrobotdata/home Google (specifically Google Brain Robotics) is continuing research on this. Exciting time to be alive.

hedgehog 10y ago

On the agriculture topic NASA has been working in this area for a while: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/biofarming.html https://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/biofarming.html As I understand it growing crops in a small, sealed environment requires much more precise understanding of how plants behave than you do for traditional Earth-bound farming.

itchyjunk 10y ago
Ah, interesting. I know NASA were doing some research in aeroponics [1] but I haven't seen anything recent on it. Lot of commercial systems I see don't have a lot of research behind but they are still getting better yields I think. I also saw an old but interesting system from MIT [2]. It would be very useful to mine data from these to train ML systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroponics [2] http://openag.media.mit.edu/ http://openag.media.mit.edu/

fnbr 10y ago

I've spoken to a few people who are interested in applying machine learning to hydroponic farming with the aim of creating vertical farms. If you could isolate the different rooms sufficiently, you could run machine learning to optimise yield (or Vitamin C). I have doubts as to the commercial viability of this, as farming is pretty low margin, so the overhead requirements for the capital expenditures would require pretty substantial gains in efficiency, which I think just don't exist.

contingencies 10y ago
I have at least one serious potential investor ready for anyone attempting this (vertical farming automation). Also, I am interested to cooperate on creating reliable contracted urban demand without the need for retail packaging - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ - currently relocating to Shenzhen. If automated urban vertical farming happens it will probably happen in China because dense/cheap/economies of scale/rising food prices/rapid urbanization/transition toward smaller households/cultural preference for fresh and less processed foods/less regulatory issues.
- simonrobb 10y ago
  Why vertical farming specifically? No doubt vertical farming will form part of the solution to feeding urban populations in the coming decades, but the area covered by open-air "horizontal" farming is immense. We just can't do construction on that scale, not to mention the incredible environmental impacts. Growing things with LEDs seems pretty wasteful when we have a great big star shining down on us all day. Vertical farming will bring fresh food to high-density populations for sure, it just isn't going to change the face of farming across the planet. Although it's a much more difficult problem to solve being an uncontrolled environment, my company is working on this automation but for traditional farms (http://touch.farm http://touch.farm). The first step is gathering rich data from different crops/climates, which is why we're starting by designing the cheapest and most usable ag sensors we can. If we can make sensor tech accessible to a wide range of farmers, we'll gain a rich enough dataset to start applying ML (and farmers and the environment win in the process). tl;dr: vertical farming is great, but what we really need is innovation/investment in traditional farming.

ericjang 10y ago

> The last part reminded me of google training a bunch of robot arms [1]. Haven't seen much being done with it, does anyone know if anything is being done with the data? The data gathered using aforementioned robot arms is available here: https://sites.google.com/site/brainrobotdata/home https://sites.google.com/site/brainrobotdata/home Google (specifically Google Brain Robotics) is continuing research on this. Exciting time to be alive.