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A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin
- spywaregorilla 5y ago> The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?
- floren 5y agohttps://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/hazard-alert_grain_bins.pdf https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/hazard...
- tantalor 5y ago> Last year, nationwide there were 38 grain entrapment cases with 23 of those leading to fatalities https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Grain-bin-accidents-caused-23-deaths-last-year-15628235.php https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Grain-bin-accident... Obviously these are low numbers compared to general population, but as a share of people who would actually enter a grain bin in the first place I would guess its high enough to matter.
- omnicognate 5y ago> “After hearing some farmers talk about how they've lost a loved ones or how they themselves have gotten injured, I got really passionate about the project,” Zents says.
- knodi123 5y agoWhy did they decide to name it after a horribly destructive pest that plagues owners of grain silos? Would the Roomba have been as successful if it was named the iCockroach?
- RankingMember 5y agoThe Beatles did alright!
- thaumasiotes 5y agoPeople like some beetles. Weevils are always bad.
- ortusdux 5y agoIn 2019, 67 incidents of grain entrapment took place, of which 39 were fatal. https://dailyyonder.com/grain-bin-accidents-and-deaths-rising-due-to-poor-crop-conditions/2020/06/10/ https://dailyyonder.com/grain-bin-accidents-and-deaths-risin...
- bumby 5y agoThis article gives a good overview of the danger: https://www.farmprogress.com/grains/significant-number-grain-bin-entrapment-cases-involves-children https://www.farmprogress.com/grains/significant-number-grain...
- jerf 5y agoAdding to the Hacker News Impromptu Grain Bin Education Hour, a Smarter Every Day video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBV6M7VOFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBV6M7VOFU
- jxramos 5y agoThe wiki image is pretty telling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_entrapment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_entrapment Does not look fun at all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQGfA-0yhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQGfA-0yhk
- dreamcompiler 5y agoGrain silos are really freaking dangerous just like a lot of activities on farms.
- voisin 5y agoCrazy that this work has been done by hand. I always assumed there would be an augur or something inside.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoThere 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.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoAnd FWIW the word is auger, which I misspelled.
- quesera 5y agoMade me laugh. An augur is a person who inteprets the will of the gods, which would certainly have applications, even inside a grain silo! But an auger would be more directly useful to the problem at hand. Apologies for the pedantry!
- masklinn 5y agoThere are definitely automation tools (augers, aerators, …) but they tend to be pretty fixed and inflexible, and sometimes there's an issue with them, and you need one of each system you want / need for each bin.
- seneca 5y agoAgriculture is an area still ripe for technological innovation. It looks less and less like it did a generation ago, but there are still many dangerous tasks, like this one, involved and, I believe, many that could be made much more efficient. I love to see projects like this making a difference for people doing critical, and often dangerous, blue collar work.
- masklinn 5y agoThe problem is that the "easy" stuff was assisted if not automated a while ago, the stuff that's always the same and pretty much just requires mechanical muscle. What's left over tends to be either controlling the stuff, dealing with failures, or work which has enough variance that it's really hard to automate reliably and perfectly.
- bewareandaware 5y agoThis 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 - can't we just buy stuff and keep it anymore?
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoConsidering an auger is already an archimedes screw and it still doesn't stop pockets from forming I don't know if adding more of them would help.
- krisoft 5y ago> The bot could also be radio controlled and it would still remove the need of a human going in. Yes. And it is radio controlled. To quote the article: "The Grain Weevil is a remote controlled specialized robot [...]" They also plan to make it autonomous but it is not yet.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoI agree robot as a service is annoying. It is a good fit though for robotics because your first version is likely to cost too much and break too soon. Selling that would make for unhappy customers. However investors like the high profit potential and that can lead to dark patterns.
- exporectomy 5y agoJust 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.
- twobitshifter 5y agoI think it’s as a service because it’s not needed often and only in situations where something goes wrong. The cost benefit may not work if you had to buy the thing.
- Traster 5y agoI would be kind of interested to know how many times the farmers need to go into the grain bin to rescue the robot.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoFriendly 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 the job done. 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. It's just a task and like any other task you should approach it in a smart manner if you want the best results. Selling something as a safety improvement isn't that easy because the physics involved in bulk materials or heavy equipment are always going to hurt people who don't work smart given enough exposure and likewise the ROI of removing any one type of exposure is low. Now, if the machine can all but eliminate the need for the manual job they might sell a few. Because farmers love when shit just magically works because the day only has so many hours in it and one less someone has to stop what you're doing to deal with. On a more technical note, bulk dry goods can generally be persuaded to follow gravity if you give them a kick start with vibration. This approach has a bunch of pluses (the equipment is very reliable and typically you can resolve blockage by varying the frequency) but I don't know why it isn't used for grain (though it is used on the trucks and rail cars that transport grain). You typically see it in bulk material handling settings where you can't afford to stop the line and/or it's too dangerous to make someone clear a blockage manually so I assume it's a cost thing and farming margins aren't big enough. It seems like these guys went and invented a robot that solves a problem that has an existing solution. But the article doesn't mention why the existing solution doesn't get used for grain and why the new robot will. I get that it's a high level press release but I still wanna know.
- legitster 5y agoPreach. On the internet it's very easy for people to talk themselves into incredibly high standards for anything. But in real life most people are pretty astute at marginal trade-offs between risk and cost. While it may look like you have a product with no competitors that will save lives, your actual competitor is "being slightly more careful" and it's free and people still aren't buying that. You still have to justify the value.
- wbc 5y agoProbably coincidence but I've noticed a ton of grain articles lately, here's a trending on on reddit from today: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nwmect/til_that_10s_of_farmers_die_each_year_from_grain/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nwmect/til_t...
- djmips 5y agoIf grain bins are dangerous to go inside, maybe there's a low tech solution like safety lines attached to a belt similar to mountain climbing or high rise construction.
- h2odragon 5y agoSafety lines in this context help retrieve the corpse.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoIt'd need to be able to pull you out somehow - the danger here is being entrapped and squeezed in the grain, not a fall.
- Seattle3503 5y agoI assume weight is a part of what entraps someone. What if you used bungee cords to reduce your weight? Or had a rip cord you could pull that would yank you out.
- mikey_p 5y agoActually falling is an issue with bridged grain. Even among people who will get in bins, it's widely accepted that you never go into flowing grain.
- splistud 5y agoYes, using a harness is standard (recommended) practice, along with someone to pull the other end
- gcheong 5y agoThen 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 rehooking every few steps up the ladder.
- h2odragon 5y agoA farmer I knew had run the numbers on the cycle time for unloading grain wagons at harvest time; paying neighborhood kids $3/hr (in 1982 or so) to dance on top of the grain as it drained paid off. There were bars to grab on the top of the wagons so it wasn't deeply dangerous, but it certainly got exciting. His kids were the ones driving the wagon trains from the fields to the silos. That was even more exciting. No insurance, just "if you break it you have to help fix it"
- chasd00 5y agoi use to help my uncle bale hay. I would drive the truck and pull the trailer in the pasture while he and my cousin loaded the bales. I was around 9 or 10 and it was the coolest thing i had ever done ( at the time ) hah.
- neilv 5y agoWhomever manages to sell a product called "Grain Weevil" to farmers must be unfathomably brilliant.
- Animats 5y agoAbout 30 people a year are entrapped in grain bins. About half die. Generally, someone goes inside a grain bin only because something has gone wrong. Which is when it's most dangerous. [1] https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-death-4-ways-it-happens https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-death-4-ways-...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Pxtl 5y agoThis sounds like typical heavy industry stuff, but I guess a lot of the normal practices of heavy industry aren't as common in the ag sector.
- Animats 5y agoRight. In industry, you'd need a confined space permit, lockout/tagout of any related machinery, a fall protection rig, and an outside watcher to go inside a grain silo. Standard industrial safety. Farms with 10 employees or less are mostly exempt from OSHA regulations, by an act of Congress demanded by the agriculture industry. [1] https://www.osha.gov/grain-handling https://www.osha.gov/grain-handling [2] https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/osha-clarifies-small-farm-regulation_5-ar44607 https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/osha-clarifies-sma...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- simon_000666 5y agoThat’s an interesting statistic. Is there data anywhere that has a consolidated list of counts of accidental death by injury. That would be a great place to look for startup ideas.
- nico_h 5y agoHere is a negative two cents idea: Attach a dumb auger drive "robot" to the end of tether adjustable from the top, with an umbilical to solar panels, maybe a lidar or sonar to see the shape of the field, make it go in spiral back and forth Roomba style. Eventually you'll have run all over the grain multiple times. No need for fancy deep learning AI.
- nico_h 5y agoIf you don't have to make it as fast as possible in a pay per time used way, maybe the dumb solution can be cost effective.
- atum47 5y agoJust saw an article on Reddit in how dangerous this is. Back in college I was being asked to develop a project to a rice factory, so I went there several times. In one occasion a worker fell in one of those grain bin and died a slowly death. Scary as heck.
- sunshineforever 5y agoOnce we can make bread with nothing but sunlight and robots humanity will be so much closer to being free from work.
- titanomachy 5y agoIf bread was all I needed, I'd already be able to meet my needs with 30 minutes of work a week.
- jonplackett 5y agoCan you make a big one I can drive around some sand dunes?
- exporectomy 5y agoColin Furze made one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuDNc-_4v94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuDNc-_4v94
- jonplackett 5y agoThat was awesome! Who the hell is this guy and why is he wearing a shirt and tie driving a screw-tank?!
- exporectomy 5y agoA Youtube celebrity for the 12-year-old-boy and 12-year-old-boy-at-heart market.
- ultimape 5y agoYes, this is basically a mini "screw-propelled vehicle"
- aurelianito 5y agoIn Argentina, silos have been mostly replaced by silo bags with grain inside. Like this one: https://agroverdad.com.ar/2019/04/como-lograr-en-8-pasos-un-almacenamiento-en-silobolsa-seguro-y-eficiente https://agroverdad.com.ar/2019/04/como-lograr-en-8-pasos-un-...
- leafmeal 5y agoGrain bins and silos aren't the same thing https://ilfbpartners.com/farm/the-difference-between-grain-bins-and-silos/ https://ilfbpartners.com/farm/the-difference-between-grain-b...
- Semiapies 5y agoI'm kind of fascinated by how many comments in here are of the "Gee, why use something so complicated? Why not just tie on a rope if you go in the silo?" variety. The inability to imagine that people who aren't tech bros can and actually do sensible things to address problems they encounter--and that some of their problems might still be harder to solve than coding a signup form--is impressive.
- 1123581321 5y ago1. Not many comments are like that. 2. Many (most?) users here do more complex programming work than just signup forms. 3. Not everyone has the privilege of being familiar with both ag and programming. Plus, there are a lot of young users here. Today, a few people are learning more about silo safety. What’s impressive about that?
- midasuni 5y ago> Today, a few people are learning more about silo safety. What’s impressive about that? What’s not impressive?
- 1123581321 5y agoI’m always a little amazed, in a good way, how willing people are willing to repeatedly educate others, if that’s what you mean. If you mean everyone should have read articles about ag safety or experienced it through work or family connections, to the point they’re to be blamed if not, I don’t agree. I’m fortunate enough to have been thoroughly exposed to farming growing up, and it sounds like you were too. Sadly, most people don’t get to have that experience due to population distribution in most industrialized countries, and their formal education and learning for fun may have gone in different directions. Field trips, field internships, WWOOF, 4H, etc. help and it’s important to support those efforts. In the meantime, I find it completely normal that some people learn about silo safety when a silo safety article is posted.
- midasuni 5y ago
- jen_h 5y agoMet a couple a few years ago who’d recently lost their teenaged son tamping down a corn bin; still have nightmares about the details. This will be wonderful if it’s accessible to all farmers.