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Automated anything for farms tends to work a lot better on plots of land that are large and flat as a pancake. I'm no autonomous vehicle expert but if you're ha

Automated anything for farms tends to work a lot better on plots of land that are large and flat as a pancake. I'm no autonomous vehicle expert but if you're haying irregularly shaped fields with topographical variation and ideosyncratic hazards (e.g., soft ground, ruts, random trees in fields, etc) then building an automated solution is a lot harder than an autopilot for a combine that works a bunch of perfectly flat, mile-by-mile plots in Nebraska. If you're haying a small factory farm, driving the tractor is a small fraction of the labor; you're also moving the hay from fields to barn in a trailer and then stacking hay with either humans, a tractor, or a skid-steer. All of this might eventually get automated a la the recent news on Amazon factories, but we're probably (at least) a few years away from that.

SECProto 7y ago
> building an automated solution is a lot harder than an autopilot for a combine that works a bunch of perfectly flat, mile-by-mile plots in Nebraska Absolutely, and I don't expect it to be a thing for a decade(s) - until after it's a solved issue on roads and/or the large, flat plots out west. > If you're haying a small factory farm, driving the tractor is a small fraction of the labor I agree. However, it's also (in my limited experience) the most weather dependent part - there's usually a short weather window to get it cut, dried, and baled - and having an extra set of (self-driving wheels) would be beneficial. > All of this might eventually get automated a la the recent news on Amazon factories, but we're probably (at least) a few years away from that. Definitely agree.
leroy_masochist 7y ago
That was supposed to read small family farm, not small factory farm. Oops