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> The latest drone model, the $3500 DJI Mavic Enterprise, can record sounds and play them over a speaker - allowing a dog's bark, or other noises, to be loudly
by samcday 8y ago
> The latest drone model, the $3500 DJI Mavic Enterprise, can record sounds and play them over a speaker - allowing a dog's bark, or other noises, to be loudly projected across a paddock.
Ok so basically it's just an off-the-shelf drone with a big speaker on top making barking noises. The most clever solutions are the simplest ones :)
In my mind the next logical step would be AI that pilots the drones autonomously, managing location of herds of animals to balance various objectives. I'm not much of a rancher, so I don't know what those would be. But if I had to hazard a guess, rotating where the herd grazes, keeping them safe, bringing them into pens during certain periods.
I remember reading years ago that there was some project to autonomously milk cows. The cows were taught to go into a special milking stall when they were ready to be milked. Each cow was RFID'd and even had their own Twitter handle that was posted to each time the cow was milked.
Modern John Deere machinery all but runs itself. Modern combine harvesters are outfitted with GPS and the person "operating it" is basically sitting in there watching the sportsball or whatever.
It's kinda surreal when you step back and look at the trajectory. It's easy to picture, in the not too distant future, farms that are run entirely autonomously, with only light direct intervention performed remotely from C&C centers in a nice comfy air-conditioned office in downtown Manhattan.
I wonder how much longer it would take before some kind of mass human extinction event doesn't even impact the agriculture ecosystem? I'm imaging this bizarre dystopia where the machines rose up, killed all the humans, and then settled down to produce countless tonnes of animal and vegetable produce in peace. Sure, there's none of those pesky humans around to consume it, but the AI wasn't optimized for that purpose - it just wants to produce as much and as efficiently as possible.
- jacobush 8y agoA case of the paperclip maximizer. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
- Lukas_Skywalker 8y agoThe autonomous milking robots are actually already in wide use for about a decade. There is even already an aftermarket for used milking robots in Europe. As far as I know they first fisinfect and then milk the cows. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnNGPsVdYSA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnNGPsVdYSA
- platz 8y agoSo like interstellar
- gwern 8y ago> I remember reading years ago that there was some project to autonomously milk cows. The cows were taught to go into a special milking stall when they were ready to be milked. Each cow was RFID'd and even had their own Twitter handle that was posted to each time the cow was milked. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/technology/farm-technology-milkers-robots.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/technology/farm-technolog...
- jimmaswell 8y agoWhy would anyone choose to live in Manhattan when their job is entirely remote?
- CPLX 8y agoBecause the rest of their life isn’t entirely remote.
- deanalevitt 8y agoI was living in NYC, working remotely for a few years when that exact question hit me. A few months later I was in Hawaii.
- baddox 8y agoI’m not sure what you mean. New York City is famously regarded as a great city for music, art, museums, theatre, cinema, comedy, architecture, food, nightlife, cultural diversity, and more. I have never heard the sentiment “my NYC job is so great, I just wish it were in another town.”
- pizza 8y agoRent is too damn high
- jimmaswell 8y agoHigh rent like pizza said as well as crowdedness, having to choose between transit and driving in really bad traffic, general city complaints. I've used the subways in NYC a few times and I really wouldn't like having to do that all the time. There is some great stuff there like the Museum of Natural History but I think I'd rather live in a surrounding suburb or something, or Hawaii like the other commenter suggested. On the transit subject, the lack of car reliance is nice in theory, but I honestly found my short experience of taking MTA subways around less enjoyable than driving. Very crowded, jerked so hard when it started moving that I almost fell over, and the walks between connections can be tiring if there's a rush to get there on time or it's a long distance (or both - running from one side of the PABT to the other isn't fun when you're not in great shape)
- 8y ago
- marcosdumay 8y ago> I'm not much of a rancher, so I don't know what those would be. Rotating pasture, making sure the cattle does not run away, assembling them for vaccination. Those are things that people can not do reliably on large scale, but surveillance and guide drones coupled with rfid tags can easily. I guess the largest current bottleneck is drone time on the air and maintenance.
- baddox 8y agoIt seems like a wheeled or tracked drone would be much simpler and more reliable for herding sheep.
- titanomachy 8y agoI don't think there's anything that moves fast enough yet (over varied terrain).
- abraae 8y agoThat is definitely not the case, at least not in NZ. This is the kind of terrain you might see:http://woolshed1.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-zealand-agricultural-history.html http://woolshed1.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-zealand-agricultur... If you got up close you'd find land slips, cracks, fallen trees and sheep shit. A wheeled vehicle would need to be at least the size of a quad bike.