7 ms·

Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

46 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

nsm 5y ago
This is part of the general trend in robots summed up roughly like: 1. Corporations want to save money and are willing to spend up front for it. People will replace personal vehicles far more slowly. 2. A restricted environment is way easier to engineer a robot for vs. arbitrary environments. 3. It is easier to train workers about working around heavy machinery than to teach arbitrary humans to look both ways before crossing the street. 4. It is way easier to get permission on privately owned land than to convince the government for a state or nation wide laws. I work in autonomous drones and see similar trends in that space too.
- melling 5y ago
  A trend that has been going on for several decades. https://www.automate.org/blogs/the-history-of-robotics-in-the-automotive-industry https://www.automate.org/blogs/the-history-of-robotics-in-th...
Jensson 5y ago
Or just buy a self driving vacuum and you have a self driving vehicle in your own home. It isn't nearly as impressive when you remove traffic etc from the equation though.
- Markoff 5y ago
  home has likely more (pedestrian) traffic than farm field
  - fy20 5y ago
    If my Roborock weighed 7 tons and was the size of a tractor I'd probably have been crushed to death by now.
colechristensen 5y ago
Totally different set of problems. An autonomous tractor is more like a big CNC machine. Positioning is easy and very little intelligence is required.
- wavegeek 5y ago
  Having driven a tractor on my parents' farm, I can confirm this. It is so mindless it is not boring, because you can think of other things.
- HellDunkel 5y ago
  Once the tractor is out in the field it can be automated rather easily yes. The tech makes sense on big farms with flat fields and no wild animals. Woods and non-flat terrain, different story.
_huayra_ 5y ago
Is there a non-"team green" solution that works well? With all the bad press about Deere these days (including a few HN comments from suppliers to Deere that revealed they deliberately ask for slightly tweaked parts to avoid being compatible with regular parts), I wonder if there's a suitable alternative.
- jmrm 5y ago
  I live in a rural area and some people are selling their used John Deere machines to buy new ones from other brands due to this problem. It won't surprise me if those other brands invest more in that technology in the next years to be on par to John Deere, and it would be really positive if they force a higher level of repairability. Anyway, those who sell those products probably would also sell the autonomous technology as a service more than a one pay product. If those services are arriving in the car market I doubt that machinery industry would reject earning a periodical income in addition to machine sales.
ck2 5y ago
But an automated tractor is not going to stop for a mother bird protecting her eggs. https://www.youtube.com/embed/vU-BuWY7wjw https://www.youtube.com/embed/vU-BuWY7wjw https://v.redd.it/netuqk4d5qn81/DASH_720.mp4 https://v.redd.it/netuqk4d5qn81/DASH_720.mp4 I actually feel that is a real problem and shows the little things developers don't take into account and why self-driving cars are going to kill a bunch of people until they debug it, with you as the beta-tester.
- junon 5y ago
  Self driving tractors and self driving cars have much different safety features. Don't get me wrong, tractors should absolutely be smart enough to handle wildlife like that. But comparing the two is unfair.
olivermarks 5y ago
I never want to be in a 'driverless vehicle'. I want control and I want to drive myself.
- wavegeek 5y ago
  But I don't want to driving a vehicle on the same road I am on. Well, not exactly you but, you know, those idiots.
  - tinybrotosaurus 5y ago
    What is your opinion on the societal effects of this lack of trust? This default trust on computer systems undermine trust in other humans. How can we hope to live in a community we do not trust? Why would i take into consideration X opinion on foreign trade if this "computer" thing is likely to be less wrong?
    - lifeplusplus 5y ago
      That's like saying elevators should still have a person controlling it manually because computers would deteoriate societal trust
      - tinybrotosaurus 5y ago
        An elevator can be considered a purely mechanical, not-social thing. Traffic can have a social aspect to it, most of us do not really care and consider it too to be a not-social thing. My point was more about what happens when we take things with social aspects and start to think of them as purely "mechanical" things. At that point having a human do activity "X" will appear dumb, like having a human control an elevator today. Could we still call this future world a society, since there is nothing social about it? Essentially we will dehumanize everything, and to me it seems sad.
  - dijonman2 5y ago
    The computer is only as smart as the person who programmed it.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
I'm really surprised autonomous recreational boats are not something yet. There are plenty of canals and rivers with day boats and holiday boats going about slowly around the 3-6mph speed limits which would make ideal candidates as this is a very limited contained environment. At the very least the insurance companies could be insisting on some sort of crash avoidance guidance/control system to avoid boats from getting damaged whilst protecting riverside property.
- leobg 5y ago
  Isn’t the point of recreational boating that you drive it yourself? Like with turning the meats when barbecuing? We daddies need something important to do. :)
  - Terry_Roll 5y ago
    You arent allowed to drink and drive and when people go on a boating holiday that becomes inevitable. Besides it can get quite boring pottering around at 3-6mph on a canal or river, the novelty can wear off quickly especially if its raining and you have to stand at the back steering a canal boat. So why not have some sort of autonomous guidance system? At least it can become more pleasant in bad weather and opens up the holiday season a bit more for those who are happy to sit inside and see the world go by from the comfort of the inside of the boat. In a way, its why coach/bus holidays exist, the tour guide on the coach points out the sights whilst you relax in the comfort of your own seat, but having your own space, like a boat can also it make it relaxing especially if you dont want to be around other people. A coach holiday can still feel like a train commute into London, but with a seat. Another area of development which the car manufacturers might want to develop, is radio controlled cars kits with active suspension and aerodynamics with some sort of AI/coding control. Like a Formula1 championship but radio controlled model cars. It could sow those seeds for kids to learn to code and then test their code on a race circuit.
    - leobg 5y ago
      You’re right. At least the option to turn on autopilot would certainly be nice to have. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. Re: R/C autonomous toys. I think these already exist. You can build them yourself from a raspberry pi. And I think there are also kits for autonomous robots. Haven’t heard of racing cars, but small robot creatures for indoor use. I don’t remember any names of brands.
tda 5y ago
There are luckily many developements in the space. One I found particularly interesting: https://pixelfarmingrobotics.com/robot-one https://pixelfarmingrobotics.com/robot-one I think/hope thefuture of agriculture is in diverse cropping & mechanical weed removal by light autonomous machines
occz 5y ago
Alternatively, take one of many fully autonomous trains. We already have driverless vehicles, it's just that cars are downright bad, more or less.
einpoklum 5y ago
> Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Actually, no. There are many things I'm tired of waiting for in industrial manufacturing and engineering, and driverless vehicles are not really on that list. Even if I think about transportation challenges only, the need for human drivers is not even on my top 10 list of issues.
- sidpatil 5y ago
  What are some of the things you'd like to see in industrial manufacturing and engineering?
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Heathrow Terminal 5 has autonomous pods to ferry people between the carpark and terminal. It seems you can go a long way by constraining the requirements. https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-driving-pods https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-drivi...
- alexisread 5y ago
  A lot further than self driving cars with PRT in fact. 3D rail routing, factory pallet->shop direct delivery, 300mph point to point access, easy emergency and disabled access, no batteries to manufacture, no real land use issues (just poles in the ground for hanging systems), fast infra build out using prefabricated track, simultaneous electricity, transport, power (solar, on the top of hanging rails) and telecoms build out with the rail infra. Fully decentralised infra once several tracks are interconnected.
black_13 5y ago
techwiz137 5y ago
Ah yes, from the company that absolutely hates right-to-repair.
mast22 5y ago
Russian company cognitive pilot has been working on the same technology. Their approach was to shift the responsibility regarding some functions of a machine and to increase the performance of harvest and to make the driver's job easier. https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/
- robbiep 5y ago
  Without using AI there have been substantial improvements already - I was home for harvest on my family farm last year, driving a JD S970 (last time I drove was a CTSII about 10 years ago). 40 ft front, gps auto steer, radar controlled front height - cognitively it was 10% of what it was 15 years ago. My uncle had a new X series with a 60ft front that also slaves the chaser bin for unloading so you’re basically automating the unloading as well - it’s wild. Our country is all to undulating I think to be even close to being fully autonomous anytime in the next 2.0 years but it will be interesting to see how this all develops. 10 years ago the talk of remote tractors was to have one lead manned machine with 1-3 ‘slaves’ machines following behind so the one operator can manage a much bigger area, it’s interesting that this doesn’t seem to be the way they’re going
hwers 5y ago
Would be interesting if you could make this work similar to SolarCity. If own any plot of land, some company will give you a robot for free that will take care of planting seeds and harvesting the crops, and it'll pay for itself over time by taking some portion of the production.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Land and fertile farmland are very different things.

46 points by RickJWagner 5y ago

nsm 5y ago

This is part of the general trend in robots summed up roughly like: 1. Corporations want to save money and are willing to spend up front for it. People will replace personal vehicles far more slowly. 2. A restricted environment is way easier to engineer a robot for vs. arbitrary environments. 3. It is easier to train workers about working around heavy machinery than to teach arbitrary humans to look both ways before crossing the street. 4. It is way easier to get permission on privately owned land than to convince the government for a state or nation wide laws. I work in autonomous drones and see similar trends in that space too.

melling 5y ago
A trend that has been going on for several decades. https://www.automate.org/blogs/the-history-of-robotics-in-the-automotive-industry https://www.automate.org/blogs/the-history-of-robotics-in-th...

Jensson 5y ago

Or just buy a self driving vacuum and you have a self driving vehicle in your own home. It isn't nearly as impressive when you remove traffic etc from the equation though.

Markoff 5y ago
home has likely more (pedestrian) traffic than farm field
- fy20 5y ago
  If my Roborock weighed 7 tons and was the size of a tractor I'd probably have been crushed to death by now.

colechristensen 5y ago

Totally different set of problems. An autonomous tractor is more like a big CNC machine. Positioning is easy and very little intelligence is required.

wavegeek 5y ago
Having driven a tractor on my parents' farm, I can confirm this. It is so mindless it is not boring, because you can think of other things.
HellDunkel 5y ago
Once the tractor is out in the field it can be automated rather easily yes. The tech makes sense on big farms with flat fields and no wild animals. Woods and non-flat terrain, different story.

_huayra_ 5y ago

Is there a non-"team green" solution that works well? With all the bad press about Deere these days (including a few HN comments from suppliers to Deere that revealed they deliberately ask for slightly tweaked parts to avoid being compatible with regular parts), I wonder if there's a suitable alternative.

jmrm 5y ago
I live in a rural area and some people are selling their used John Deere machines to buy new ones from other brands due to this problem. It won't surprise me if those other brands invest more in that technology in the next years to be on par to John Deere, and it would be really positive if they force a higher level of repairability. Anyway, those who sell those products probably would also sell the autonomous technology as a service more than a one pay product. If those services are arriving in the car market I doubt that machinery industry would reject earning a periodical income in addition to machine sales.

ck2 5y ago

But an automated tractor is not going to stop for a mother bird protecting her eggs. https://www.youtube.com/embed/vU-BuWY7wjw https://www.youtube.com/embed/vU-BuWY7wjw https://v.redd.it/netuqk4d5qn81/DASH_720.mp4 https://v.redd.it/netuqk4d5qn81/DASH_720.mp4 I actually feel that is a real problem and shows the little things developers don't take into account and why self-driving cars are going to kill a bunch of people until they debug it, with you as the beta-tester.

junon 5y ago
Self driving tractors and self driving cars have much different safety features. Don't get me wrong, tractors should absolutely be smart enough to handle wildlife like that. But comparing the two is unfair.

olivermarks 5y ago

I never want to be in a 'driverless vehicle'. I want control and I want to drive myself.

wavegeek 5y ago
But I don't want to driving a vehicle on the same road I am on. Well, not exactly you but, you know, those idiots.
- tinybrotosaurus 5y ago
  What is your opinion on the societal effects of this lack of trust? This default trust on computer systems undermine trust in other humans. How can we hope to live in a community we do not trust? Why would i take into consideration X opinion on foreign trade if this "computer" thing is likely to be less wrong?
  - lifeplusplus 5y ago
    That's like saying elevators should still have a person controlling it manually because computers would deteoriate societal trust
    - tinybrotosaurus 5y ago
      An elevator can be considered a purely mechanical, not-social thing. Traffic can have a social aspect to it, most of us do not really care and consider it too to be a not-social thing. My point was more about what happens when we take things with social aspects and start to think of them as purely "mechanical" things. At that point having a human do activity "X" will appear dumb, like having a human control an elevator today. Could we still call this future world a society, since there is nothing social about it? Essentially we will dehumanize everything, and to me it seems sad.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  The computer is only as smart as the person who programmed it.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

I'm really surprised autonomous recreational boats are not something yet. There are plenty of canals and rivers with day boats and holiday boats going about slowly around the 3-6mph speed limits which would make ideal candidates as this is a very limited contained environment. At the very least the insurance companies could be insisting on some sort of crash avoidance guidance/control system to avoid boats from getting damaged whilst protecting riverside property.

leobg 5y ago
Isn’t the point of recreational boating that you drive it yourself? Like with turning the meats when barbecuing? We daddies need something important to do. :)
- Terry_Roll 5y ago
  You arent allowed to drink and drive and when people go on a boating holiday that becomes inevitable. Besides it can get quite boring pottering around at 3-6mph on a canal or river, the novelty can wear off quickly especially if its raining and you have to stand at the back steering a canal boat. So why not have some sort of autonomous guidance system? At least it can become more pleasant in bad weather and opens up the holiday season a bit more for those who are happy to sit inside and see the world go by from the comfort of the inside of the boat. In a way, its why coach/bus holidays exist, the tour guide on the coach points out the sights whilst you relax in the comfort of your own seat, but having your own space, like a boat can also it make it relaxing especially if you dont want to be around other people. A coach holiday can still feel like a train commute into London, but with a seat. Another area of development which the car manufacturers might want to develop, is radio controlled cars kits with active suspension and aerodynamics with some sort of AI/coding control. Like a Formula1 championship but radio controlled model cars. It could sow those seeds for kids to learn to code and then test their code on a race circuit.
  - leobg 5y ago
    You’re right. At least the option to turn on autopilot would certainly be nice to have. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. Re: R/C autonomous toys. I think these already exist. You can build them yourself from a raspberry pi. And I think there are also kits for autonomous robots. Haven’t heard of racing cars, but small robot creatures for indoor use. I don’t remember any names of brands.

tda 5y ago

There are luckily many developements in the space. One I found particularly interesting: https://pixelfarmingrobotics.com/robot-one https://pixelfarmingrobotics.com/robot-one I think/hope thefuture of agriculture is in diverse cropping & mechanical weed removal by light autonomous machines

occz 5y ago

Alternatively, take one of many fully autonomous trains. We already have driverless vehicles, it's just that cars are downright bad, more or less.

einpoklum 5y ago

> Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Actually, no. There are many things I'm tired of waiting for in industrial manufacturing and engineering, and driverless vehicles are not really on that list. Even if I think about transportation challenges only, the need for human drivers is not even on my top 10 list of issues.

sidpatil 5y ago
What are some of the things you'd like to see in industrial manufacturing and engineering?

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Heathrow Terminal 5 has autonomous pods to ferry people between the carpark and terminal. It seems you can go a long way by constraining the requirements. https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-driving-pods https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-drivi...

alexisread 5y ago
A lot further than self driving cars with PRT in fact. 3D rail routing, factory pallet->shop direct delivery, 300mph point to point access, easy emergency and disabled access, no batteries to manufacture, no real land use issues (just poles in the ground for hanging systems), fast infra build out using prefabricated track, simultaneous electricity, transport, power (solar, on the top of hanging rails) and telecoms build out with the rail infra. Fully decentralised infra once several tracks are interconnected.

black_13 5y ago

techwiz137 5y ago

Ah yes, from the company that absolutely hates right-to-repair.

mast22 5y ago

Russian company cognitive pilot has been working on the same technology. Their approach was to shift the responsibility regarding some functions of a machine and to increase the performance of harvest and to make the driver's job easier. https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/

robbiep 5y ago
Without using AI there have been substantial improvements already - I was home for harvest on my family farm last year, driving a JD S970 (last time I drove was a CTSII about 10 years ago). 40 ft front, gps auto steer, radar controlled front height - cognitively it was 10% of what it was 15 years ago. My uncle had a new X series with a 60ft front that also slaves the chaser bin for unloading so you’re basically automating the unloading as well - it’s wild. Our country is all to undulating I think to be even close to being fully autonomous anytime in the next 2.0 years but it will be interesting to see how this all develops. 10 years ago the talk of remote tractors was to have one lead manned machine with 1-3 ‘slaves’ machines following behind so the one operator can manage a much bigger area, it’s interesting that this doesn’t seem to be the way they’re going

hwers 5y ago

Would be interesting if you could make this work similar to SolarCity. If own any plot of land, some company will give you a robot for free that will take care of planting seeds and harvesting the crops, and it'll pay for itself over time by taking some portion of the production.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
Land and fertile farmland are very different things.