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I know cnc and farming, and I really don't see this product surviving. I can't find a shovel that lasts more than a few months on my small farm, I don't know ho

I know cnc and farming, and I really don't see this product surviving. I can't find a shovel that lasts more than a few months on my small farm, I don't know how a big 3d printer is going to cut it in anything like real agricultural conditions. I would love to be wrong though, garden robots would be great, especially if they had lasers for slugs. Actually, forget the rest of the robot, all I really want is a slug laser.

bobiny 5y ago
Try Fiskars, they make light but sturdy gardening equipment
foxhop 5y ago
Slug lazers ~= small flock of ducks
- schmorptron 5y ago
  Ah, biological warfare.
- lb0 5y ago
  Not species-appropriate usually without enough roaming space and a lake .. so not for everyone :( Btw, did I see the robot harvesting in the end? Everything else is fine, but at least this don't take away from me! :>
- zajio1am 5y ago
  From what i heard, they usually destroy every green on you garden first and only after that turn to slugs.
- bserge 5y ago
  Hens would be less destructive, I think.
thepete2 5y ago
I don't have much garden experience, and I could possibly imagine this thing surviving in a greenhouse. But on the outside I agree with you, at the least there will be some intervention required.
wildpeaks 5y ago
the finger on the monkey paw curls your slugs now shoot lasers
rytis 5y ago
Just a crazy idea - they say you can do farming from anywhere using their app. So... What about Farming-as-a-Service. You assign users small patches, where they can do whatever they like, and how they like it, and any surviving vegetables are shipped to them. Sounds silly, and is mostly for lolz, may not be sustainable either, but who knows :) ?...
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Yeah I mean they are [supposed to be] testing anyway, might as well rent out the equipment during the experiment and sell the produce.
- dhicks6345789 5y ago
  Here in the UK, allotments are currently back in fashion - garden-sized strips of land assigned to people who rent them for a small amount each year. Currently in demand again, especially in cities where flat-dwellers might not have their own garden - you can spend a few hours a week getting out of the house and getting some exercise / fresh air. A traditional allotment does take a bit of a time commitment, and of course not every day is sunny, and free allotments in some areas are very limited, so maybe combine allotments with a farming robot. Get a parcel of land, maybe a way outside town (but accessible via public transport), split it up into allotments that people can farm daily remotely or come and visit for a nice day out. The sort of thing a farm with a farm shop or pick-your-own operation could diversify into - rent out strips of land for remote users to tinker around on, handle shipping them their ripe produce for a reasonable fee.
- rahimiali 5y ago
  Clever idea. How do I get my harvest once it’s ready? Does someone have to harvest the plants for me and mail them to me?
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    In the video on the site they show a robot arm plucking carrots out of the ground and placing them into a basket, but that might have been from one of the research basket. But shipping them to you sounds reasonable, although packaging them so they don't rot and the distance might nullify any real ecological advantage.
jacquesm 5y ago
Agreed, this is a nice hobby project but it is nowhere near ruggedized enough to survive the weather, let alone farming for more than the period of the demonstration. Too fragile, too many delicate exposed parts, grooves aimed upwards where moisture and dirt will collect and so on. Props for trying though.
PennRobotics 5y ago
This project has been around nearly ten years. They've sold hundreds (or possibly thousands) and raised well over a million dollars. Looking through their forum, I'd guess they continually identify faulty parts (O-rings, moisture sensor, belt alignment) and improve these in successive designs. They make effective suggestions for maintenance and replacement of parts. I do believe this won't necessarily save someone time. It probably just turns two hours of vegetable gardening per week into one hour of vegetable gardening plus one hour of robot gardening. I believe there are enough people in the world who enjoy gardening their mechatronics for this to have a respectable future, but I agree that it will never compete with any commercial venture ... unless someone invents an OpenCV saffron stigma identifier.
- musingsole 5y ago
  Everyone's always bitter how technology's stepping stones fit into particular niches and manage to eek by -- providing inspiration for better systems to come when there is a proper problem and ecosystem to support them isn't enough for these types. It's like questioning the purpose and validity of the moonshot.
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    Well, "these types" have lived long enough to recognize that the solution proposed is itself a part of the problem. We need less robotics and hands off farming for healthy nutritious and sustainable food production, not more.
dhicks6345789 5y ago
> all I really want is a slug laser Even better: a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/tmp/slugbot.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/tmp/slugbot.html The project is from circa-2000, I remember being impressed by the idea at the time, and I'd have thought slug-hunting robots would be more of a common thing by now - turns out robotics for agriculture are hard.
- woutgaze 5y ago
  > a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs Isn’t that called a duck?
  - bserge 5y ago
    Ha. But actually, if most people weren't so averse to biological organisms, perhaps we would've had computer controlled ducks, rats, hens and other small animals by now. Why bother reinventing the whole thing when you could just replace (part of) their brains. Experimentation would be pretty gruesome though.
    - galenlynch 5y ago
      Ducks already eat slugs, no BMI required.
    - KirillPanov 5y ago
      I dream of cyber-moles. Seriously. If you've ever watched utility crews installing or repairing underground fiber, and then had moles colonize your yard, there is only one logical conclusion: silly humans, you are doing it wrong.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      The problem is e-coli (and a few similar things). Animal poop is full of it, and we don't want that in our food supply. Machines don't leave e-coli behind to contaminate our food like biological organisms do. (hint wash your fresh food!)
the_only_law 5y ago
> I would love to be wrong though, garden robots would be great, especially if they had lasers for slugs I’ve had a similar idea before, for roaches, but I’m just not sure how it could work. Surely any laser with enough power output to kill something would cause a decent amount of collateral as well?
- saalweachter 5y ago
  You could make them pack hunters, with the expectation that 8-12 separate slug/roach lasers would end up focused on a target slug at a time. That way you'd be performing target recognition from multiple angles and mis-classifications would tend to only result in the not-slug being hit with 10-20% power.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Which is the problem with they mosquito shooting turret, as well. I hate mosquitos as much as slugs - but I do not like people to loose their eyesight over it. There would have to be many reliable savety mechanism, before this can become a thing. Otherwise I will have trained one, to target ticks as well.
schmorptron 5y ago
From the video it seems like there's a model that can switch tools - so if you install a night vision camera, strong laser and train some sort of fancy model to detect slugs that are not currently obscured by leaves, you might be able to laser them.

bobiny 5y ago

Try Fiskars, they make light but sturdy gardening equipment

foxhop 5y ago

Slug lazers ~= small flock of ducks

schmorptron 5y ago
Ah, biological warfare.
lb0 5y ago
Not species-appropriate usually without enough roaming space and a lake .. so not for everyone :( Btw, did I see the robot harvesting in the end? Everything else is fine, but at least this don't take away from me! :>
zajio1am 5y ago
From what i heard, they usually destroy every green on you garden first and only after that turn to slugs.
bserge 5y ago
Hens would be less destructive, I think.

thepete2 5y ago

I don't have much garden experience, and I could possibly imagine this thing surviving in a greenhouse. But on the outside I agree with you, at the least there will be some intervention required.

wildpeaks 5y ago

the finger on the monkey paw curls your slugs now shoot lasers

rytis 5y ago

Just a crazy idea - they say you can do farming from anywhere using their app. So... What about Farming-as-a-Service. You assign users small patches, where they can do whatever they like, and how they like it, and any surviving vegetables are shipped to them. Sounds silly, and is mostly for lolz, may not be sustainable either, but who knows :) ?...

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Yeah I mean they are [supposed to be] testing anyway, might as well rent out the equipment during the experiment and sell the produce.
dhicks6345789 5y ago
Here in the UK, allotments are currently back in fashion - garden-sized strips of land assigned to people who rent them for a small amount each year. Currently in demand again, especially in cities where flat-dwellers might not have their own garden - you can spend a few hours a week getting out of the house and getting some exercise / fresh air. A traditional allotment does take a bit of a time commitment, and of course not every day is sunny, and free allotments in some areas are very limited, so maybe combine allotments with a farming robot. Get a parcel of land, maybe a way outside town (but accessible via public transport), split it up into allotments that people can farm daily remotely or come and visit for a nice day out. The sort of thing a farm with a farm shop or pick-your-own operation could diversify into - rent out strips of land for remote users to tinker around on, handle shipping them their ripe produce for a reasonable fee.
rahimiali 5y ago
Clever idea. How do I get my harvest once it’s ready? Does someone have to harvest the plants for me and mail them to me?
- schmorptron 5y ago
  In the video on the site they show a robot arm plucking carrots out of the ground and placing them into a basket, but that might have been from one of the research basket. But shipping them to you sounds reasonable, although packaging them so they don't rot and the distance might nullify any real ecological advantage.

jacquesm 5y ago

Agreed, this is a nice hobby project but it is nowhere near ruggedized enough to survive the weather, let alone farming for more than the period of the demonstration. Too fragile, too many delicate exposed parts, grooves aimed upwards where moisture and dirt will collect and so on. Props for trying though.

PennRobotics 5y ago

This project has been around nearly ten years. They've sold hundreds (or possibly thousands) and raised well over a million dollars. Looking through their forum, I'd guess they continually identify faulty parts (O-rings, moisture sensor, belt alignment) and improve these in successive designs. They make effective suggestions for maintenance and replacement of parts. I do believe this won't necessarily save someone time. It probably just turns two hours of vegetable gardening per week into one hour of vegetable gardening plus one hour of robot gardening. I believe there are enough people in the world who enjoy gardening their mechatronics for this to have a respectable future, but I agree that it will never compete with any commercial venture ... unless someone invents an OpenCV saffron stigma identifier.

musingsole 5y ago
Everyone's always bitter how technology's stepping stones fit into particular niches and manage to eek by -- providing inspiration for better systems to come when there is a proper problem and ecosystem to support them isn't enough for these types. It's like questioning the purpose and validity of the moonshot.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  Well, "these types" have lived long enough to recognize that the solution proposed is itself a part of the problem. We need less robotics and hands off farming for healthy nutritious and sustainable food production, not more.

dhicks6345789 5y ago

> all I really want is a slug laser Even better: a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/tmp/slugbot.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/tmp/slugbot.html The project is from circa-2000, I remember being impressed by the idea at the time, and I'd have thought slug-hunting robots would be more of a common thing by now - turns out robotics for agriculture are hard.

woutgaze 5y ago
> a slug-hunting robot powered by fermented slugs Isn’t that called a duck?
- bserge 5y ago
  Ha. But actually, if most people weren't so averse to biological organisms, perhaps we would've had computer controlled ducks, rats, hens and other small animals by now. Why bother reinventing the whole thing when you could just replace (part of) their brains. Experimentation would be pretty gruesome though.
  - galenlynch 5y ago
    Ducks already eat slugs, no BMI required.
  - KirillPanov 5y ago
    I dream of cyber-moles. Seriously. If you've ever watched utility crews installing or repairing underground fiber, and then had moles colonize your yard, there is only one logical conclusion: silly humans, you are doing it wrong.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The problem is e-coli (and a few similar things). Animal poop is full of it, and we don't want that in our food supply. Machines don't leave e-coli behind to contaminate our food like biological organisms do. (hint wash your fresh food!)

the_only_law 5y ago

> I would love to be wrong though, garden robots would be great, especially if they had lasers for slugs I’ve had a similar idea before, for roaches, but I’m just not sure how it could work. Surely any laser with enough power output to kill something would cause a decent amount of collateral as well?

saalweachter 5y ago
You could make them pack hunters, with the expectation that 8-12 separate slug/roach lasers would end up focused on a target slug at a time. That way you'd be performing target recognition from multiple angles and mis-classifications would tend to only result in the not-slug being hit with 10-20% power.
hutzlibu 5y ago
Which is the problem with they mosquito shooting turret, as well. I hate mosquitos as much as slugs - but I do not like people to loose their eyesight over it. There would have to be many reliable savety mechanism, before this can become a thing. Otherwise I will have trained one, to target ticks as well.

schmorptron 5y ago

From the video it seems like there's a model that can switch tools - so if you install a night vision camera, strong laser and train some sort of fancy model to detect slugs that are not currently obscured by leaves, you might be able to laser them.