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Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]

• chillitom 4y ago
  fewer ;-)
  • JohnDoe124 4y ago
    Is 'chemicals' not an uncountable noun in this context though? It's not talking about fewer individual chemicals, just a smaller quantity of 'chemicals'.
• pfdietz 4y ago
  I wonder if recognition of weeds could be made easier by using genetically engineered crop plants with a fluorescent protein. Shine some UV on them and they're a crop plant if the fluorescence comes back at the right wavelength. Also, can less space be taken up by rows if the farm vehicle is legged? One would just need spots for the feet to land on.
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• Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Love these types of advances though I wonder if weeds and pests will adapt to outwit the robot or if our ability to adapt automation to such changes simply will always/usually be too rapid for nature to keep up.
  • searine 4y ago
    Pests will adapt to physical pest control like fire or crop rotation by timing their life cycles to avoid it. Robots aren't any different in that regard, if used without care pests could hypothetically adapt to their usage. The key to preventing this kind of adaptation is multiple modes of action. Robots do offer that ability because they can be used to both physically remove pests, and also chemically treat pests like in the video. If you have two to three robust modes of action, you can basically prevent resistance from happening entirely.
  • goalieca 4y ago
    Firmware updates happen a lot faster than evolution. I personally like the laser one and mechanical weeders
    • 0xdeadbeefbabe 4y ago
      Evolution might hijack the firmware update process now.
  • Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    Well if the weeds adapt into corn to outwit the robot that wouldn't be too bad.
    • empyrrhicist 4y ago
      Fun fact, that's sort of how we got Rye.
      • Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
        Wow, thanks for that fact! >It is possible that rye traveled west from Asia Minor as a minor admixture in wheat (possibly as a result of Vavilovian mimicry), and was only later cultivated in its own right.[0] Also found this about rye while looking that up: >Recently, scholars have discovered that rye, more than other domesticated crops has followed a weedy species type of domestication process--from wild to weed to crop and then back to weed again.[1] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye [1]https://www.thoughtco.com/rye-the-domestication-history-4092612 https://www.thoughtco.com/rye-the-domestication-history-4092...
        • empyrrhicist 4y ago
          I learned this from my brother when I was harvesting Job's Tears in the garden. A bunch of foxtail seeds kept landing in the bowl, and looked just about big enough to be a grain - I commented that it seemed likely that some of our grains must have evolved that way, getting selected because they got harder to distinguish from the main plant. He was like "yeah... that's basically the story of Rye" lol. It was something I'd never thought about, but actually trying to harvest a grain made it really clear.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    I don’t think there is anything a plant can realistically do to adapt to a high enough wattage laser burning it away in the seedling stage.
    • MikePlacid 4y ago
      - mimicry? - going invisible?
      • bergenty 4y ago
        Hmm very good points.
      • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
        Would be very very difficult for most weeds to mimic most crop plants. Plants can not become invisible.
  • geraneum 4y ago
    It's natural selection and perhaps it's more likely that they will go extinct in such a scenario.
  • cwkoss 4y ago
    There is a plant that mimics the shapes of other leaves - even if the leaves are made out of plastic. Pretty fascinating, the same photoreceptors suspected to enable this have been found in other plants, but the others don't use it to engage in mimicry. Weeds adapting to look like non-weeds is highly plausible, IMO. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8903786/#:~:text=trifoliolata%20leaves%20were%20shown%20to,gene%20transfer%20via%20airborne%20microbes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8903786/#:~:tex....
    • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
      > Weeds adapting to look like non-weeds is highly plausible, IMO. It's not highly plausible. It would take a lot of generations and a lot of mutations for this to happen.
      • cwkoss 4y ago
        Boquila trifoliolata can do it within a single generation. Most weeds don't have this capability currently, but a strong selective pressure could make it happen pretty quick with the right lucky mutations.
        • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
          No strong selective pressure could not make it happen "pretty quick" it's very complicated behavior that would take a very long time to appear
• bamboozled 4y ago
  Weeds are the enemy /s But really, the whole idea of having perfectly manicured fields like that with no sign of any weeds around seems like the real problem to me. Zero biodiversity…we wonder where the insects are going ?
  • justinator 4y ago
    Maybe it's monocrops that are problematic.
    • sidibe 4y ago
      I'm not saying either of you are wrong but the we'll be needing the robots to do it other ways or 10x as many farmers. It takes a ton of labor to deal with weeds and other issues in a more sustainable way
      • bamboozled 4y ago
        So I understand this is not realistic currently; However where I currently reside, basically everybody grows their own food, and has plenty of time to be doing other things in the meantime. So while we all need robots, there are probably a hell of a lot of people who would be able to produce even one crop a year in their backyard, who don't bother.
      • jollyllama 4y ago
        We would probably all be much healthier if instead of indirectly subsidizing make-work desk jobs, organic vegetable gardening was subsidized instead.
        • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
          That would be bad. We would require much more area for the same output.
          • jollyllama 4y ago
• hzhou321 4y ago
  Nice! If the robots can sustain on solar energy, even better.
  • jacobsenscott 4y ago
    That would be great, but I don't think we'll have batteries that can power a tractor for more than a short time on rough and soft terrain anytime soon.
• pxue 4y ago
  Just waiting for the day when the robot decides we are also a weed.
• modeless 4y ago
  Seems like it should hoe each weed instead of spraying it. I guess that's a little harder to do. Maybe a lot harder. Two other things I thought were interesting in the video. One, the idea of mapping the whole field is pretty cool. There must be useful things you could do with a millimeter-scale 3D map of an entire field. Two, this is happening in California, just a few hours' drive from Silicon Valley. I hope some of the engineers laid off recently find work in ag tech, because there will be huge opportunities coming with the rise of computer vision and (hopefully soon) robotics.
  • ajpgrealish 4y ago
    Small Robot Company have a robot called Dick which uses "Non-Chemical Weeding", i.e. they zap the weed to kill it, and it's root. They use other small robots to do the mapping and planting. I really like the idea of small, specialised robots for different tasks. https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/weed-killing https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/weed-killing
    • danielheath 4y ago
      Weed zapping is fascinating - but putting the kind of power electronics required to deliver sufficient voltage in a mobile robot is terrifying from an OHSA perspective. One group I'm familiar with are using 50kv (and "more than enough" amps) for the purpose.
      • marcosdumay 4y ago
        If there is nobody around when it's powered on, I don't see a problem. If people have to stay around to care for it, then yes, it's scary.
      • colechristensen 4y ago
        It's not really. Plenty of people have handheld tasers powered by 9v batteries and plenty of farm equipment can (and does) mangle people not being careful around very dangerous machines. This is just a misunderstanding of the risks involved in various things.
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• lchengify 4y ago
  There's another company called Carbon Robotics that uses lasers instead of weedkiller. The attachment they built needed a custom cooling rig to deal with the dozens of lasers. Super interesting engineering going on with agtech. https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/farming-robot https://www.freethink.com/robots-ai/farming-robot
  • chris_va 4y ago
    Hm, why lasers? Seems like a phased array microwave would be cheaper, require no moving parts, and be able to target the root system ... and be less of a safety risk.
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      I suspect the precision wouldn't be high enough, resulting in a lot of dead produce?
• popol12 4y ago
  Glad to hear that humans will be able to continue ruining the planet after the last bee dies
• sbf501 4y ago
  I expected farm-pest-control robots to look more like the ones in the film "Runaway" (1984) than a big laser turret you drag over a field.
• vavooom 4y ago
  Fascinating use of modern computer vision techniques equipped with modern robotics. Challenge of course is scale and getting farms to integrate such features into pre-existing processes over time.
• ALittleLight 4y ago
  One thought I had while watching that the video didn't seem to explore is that if you can precisely map the field and remember every plant, and you have 4 million plants on your field, then it seems like you could enable precise experiments. Need to find the best mix for fertilizer or pesticides? Seems like you could do very precise and large N experiments to nail down what is best for your plants in your field and possibly eke out some additional return by doing so.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    Farmers are already doing that. You don't need to map out each individual plant, as there isn't really much you can do with that level of data. Just map the field down to small squares each covering a few square meters and that is good enough. Going to the individual plant doesn't help as you can't do anything to one plant that won't leak to the next, but even if you could the difference between what two plants next to either other need is insignificant. Across a whole field there is a big difference though, so you want to break the field up some.
  • nevdka 4y ago
    You can go further than that. Monitor every plant's lifecycle and yield, and save the best for seed. How many generations before you get superwheat? You could even have multiple strains for the varying soil conditions across a single field. Add genetic testing, and you can boost genetic diversity for disease resistance. All without attracting 'GMO' labels.
    • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
      This won't help with breeding at all. You can already monitor plants lifecycle and yeild
• zurtri 4y ago
  I am waiting for this kind of tech to become viable for smaller 'hobby' type farms. you know, under 100 acres. To get the spraying done by firing up a few drones would be excellent. Particularly with weeds that are in hard to reach places on the farm.
  • Gualdrapo 4y ago
    > I am waiting for this kind of tech to become viable for smaller 'hobby' type farms. And, you know, cheap. And usable in difficult terrain. I can't imagine my father, or any farmer who does their job at small scales here in developing countries, being able to afford technology like that.
  • inetknght 4y ago
    > I am waiting for this kind of tech to become viable for smaller 'hobby' type farms. you know, under 100 acres. Yup. I've got four acres of grass that I'd love to farm... without having the farm be a full time job.
  • prawn 4y ago
    They're very smartly having this work as a tractor attachment so they're not reinventing the literal wheels. For small farms, a scaled-down version could be pushed along like a wheelbarrow or attached to something like an ATV or ride-on mower. But at the home garden scale, I'd like to see a dog-sized spider-like robot that would roam the block doing this. It can be very hard to keep soil weed free, and then weed it once it isn't.
  • Axien 4y ago
    Actually you would hire the "drone guy" to spray your fields. No need to buy drones for use a few times a year.
• mfiguiere 4y ago
  Mindblowing that it geo-locates and stores the centimeter scale position of the 4M plants of a farm!
  • propogandist 4y ago
    this is likely the SaaS part of the operation, in addition to the large CapEx to get the equipment setup.
• abledon 4y ago
  I'd love to work in this industry as a developer... coming from web/cloud what would the average interview be like? Is it more leetcode style? or system design? I would only want intermediate developer position at most for starters. What are some projects that would make someone stand out for AgTech Robotics stuff?
  • zmix 4y ago
    > What are some projects that would make someone stand out for AgTech Robotics stuff? I guess, in addition to the typical engineering stuff (AI, robotics, etc.) to work with these companies on startup-level, a passion for agriculture, especially historical agriculture, might be what could set you apart from competition.
  • eschneider 4y ago
    I interviewed with a few companies in that space last year and they were pretty much standard interviews. Some coding tests, take home projects, the usual stuff. If it looks interesting to you, definitely give it a shot.
  • melony 4y ago
    Getting in (assuming a typical robotics company/startup) is not that hard, just don't expect to get paid much (relative to most top tier tech compensation). Most of these "fun" fields all either significantly underpay, or are part of subsidiaries like Google X that are next to impossible to get in without exceptional pedigree.
  • discordance 4y ago
    Ag needs crud too
  • defrost 4y ago
    Vision, statistics, flight | ground control, etc. Eg: A chap I work with has tens of thousands of ANOVA grow plots for seed varieties spread across Western Australian Climatic conditions .. he and various assistants routinely fly multispectral camera drones above plot areas and calibration images. That's an aquisition, store, normalise, process cycle for a fairly steady data stream.
• thesausageking 4y ago
  I'm fascinated by Freethink, the company that creates videos like this for tech companies. Has anyone worked with this or similar companies? How much does it cost and how was your experience? https://www.freethink.com/about/for-brands https://www.freethink.com/about/for-brands
  • shellfishgene 4y ago
    The video was a little frustrating as it never actually explains how the robot works...
• 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Freethink brings a high degree of polish to their videos. Great for promotion. Not so sure about the 'think' part yet. Another interesting Freethink video: "Generalist vs. specialist: Which Is Better?". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2R-F68L0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2R-F68L0c
• jws 4y ago
  Maybe a dispensing system which more selectively targets the weeds should instead of using less killer, use a less effective killer. Instead of some clever bit of selective plant killing molecular wizardry, just spray the weed with lye (NaOH). Dissolve the weed and any overspray or residual will lightly raise the pH of the soil. If you have alkaline soil problems, then maybe use sulphuric acid instead.
• Jolliness7501 4y ago
  Chemicals? Do you mean dihydrogen monoxide? Horible stuff. Increase your cancer risc like from 0% to a 100%.
• a_t48 4y ago
  I worked with the founders of this company, sharp guys. Glad to see they are doing well.
• Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
  The agriculture tech industry seems like a really fun and rewarding place to be. I can't wait to see what happens in the future. Would love a job like that.
• everyplant35 4y ago
  FarmWise is another company in the space. Their machines offer a targeted cultivation for crops like lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower. See the performance of the system below: https://youtu.be/vtM_oSiuxeM https://youtu.be/vtM_oSiuxeM
• computerdork 4y ago
  This is an incredible idea and as others have mentioned below, there are other companies with products like this. In fact, John Deere released an AI controlled pesticide sprayer a little while back. It's supposed to be amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEbjcqIuvi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEbjcqIuvi0 https://www.deere.com/en/sprayers/see-spray-ultimate/ https://www.deere.com/en/sprayers/see-spray-ultimate/ But, am sure having multiple players in the market is a good idea. Yeah, John Deere is obviously a behemoth and may not be as light a nimble as a good startup in advancing this tech! (and hopefully, they wont try to squash out the competition).
  • doublerabbit 4y ago
    > John Deere > pesticide sprayer Says all about the company.
    • computerdork 4y ago
      Agree with you that we need to move away from pesticides (and also do think something like lasers sounds like a great idea). And also agree with you that John Deere is not a great example of how to run a company (they are monopolistic and are know to charge insane pricing for repairs). But, the thing I like is John Deere is the major player in farming equipment. They can have a huge, immediate impact on the amount of pesticide used today - this not a product that is being developed, it is available and already reducing the usage of pesticides. It'd be better if it came from a better company, but it's a great transition product that will probably have a large impact on pesticide usage.
    • CardenB 4y ago
      The sprayer significantly reduces the amount of pesticide needed. It’s not crop dusting, it’s precision spraying.
      • doublerabbit 4y ago
        With chemicals, killing insects, pollution creation and everything else outright environmental dangerous. Lasers are a MUCH better option. John Deere is not a reputable company when it comes to farming.
• mastazi 4y ago
  This is an improvement within the current paradigm of "big ag", but IMHO tech is opening the possibility of a completely different way of doing things. For example, this comment which is below the linked video imagines a robot-maintained food forest, I think it's on point because I, too, believe that the future is swarms of small robots rather than a few big tractors: > Imagine, a few years down the line, applying these principles to maintaining an edible polyculture ecosystem-farm. Not necessarily a big machine going through a flat field, but small drones tending to trees, vines, herbs, plants, pollinators and water features all in the location that is best for them based on local features. It could micromanage weeding and harvesting, but also composting, planting, grafting and nurturing keystone species and rare species while avoiding pesticide, nitrogen imbalance and soil compaction. A productive farm could look like the garden of Eden.
  • _aavaa_ 4y ago
    Next up, swarms of robot bees to do the pollination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation
    • conviencefee999 4y ago
      Ironically this is actually one of the bigger problems to solve for in the generation and is one that has not been solved for.
      • _aavaa_ 4y ago
        I don't think there's any irony in it. That's exactly why they were used in the show.
      • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
        This is not one of the bigger problems to solve for our generation. European honey bees are not going anywhere.
        • conviencefee999 4y ago
• iio7 4y ago
  While we're at it, let's get rid of the chemicals. There is no situation in which the toxic chemicals doesn't create a whole new set of problems.
  • fknorangesite 4y ago
    > There is no situation in which the toxic chemicals doesn't create a whole new set of problems. True, but the issue though is the problem they solve: famine.
    • loceng 4y ago
      They can still be used as a bridge to when new systems are ready to replace the old.
  • loceng 4y ago
    You could just burn the leaves of what you don't want to grow, right?
  • karmaMeansCool 4y ago
    Please don't have opinion that are different from everyone else.
• battery_glasses 4y ago
  When I see stuff like this sometimes I get depressed that I'm building apps that just move little bits of information around the web and don't have any real demonstrable value to the world. How hard is the jump into the realm of computer vision/AI/robotics for someone with strong skills and experience building web applications? Is the coding much different? Is a company like this employing math/theroy-heavy people to develop new types of AI or are they working higher up the stack and just need people who can pipe data around?
  • krosaen 4y ago
    Creator of Django did an ML project last year and has a lot of good insights - general web / programming know-how is really useful for building custom tooling to manage / observe datasets and things like that. edit: forgot to include link :) http://www.holovaty.com/writing/machine-learning-thoughts/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/machine-learning-thoughts/
  • AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Positions do all of the above exist. Just depends on the company and where in the stack you are. There's a lot of math and domain expertise on the controls and sensors sides. Most people in any particular company aren't doing those though. There are lots of jobs available for c/c++/Matlab/Python/js. If you don't want to change what you're doing or using, most modern robotic platforms have a web interface somewhere in them for monitoring the fleet. Any web developer would find their skills perfectly compatible.
  • amacneil 4y ago
    It's a common misconception that you need a ML or robotics PhD to work in the field. There are plenty of frontend & backend web engineering, data engineering, and infrastructure/devops roles available at robotics companies - you don't need to be a domain expert. For example, at Foxglove[0] we are building open source web-based visualization and data management for robotics (shameless plug: currently hiring). [0] https://foxglove.dev/ https://foxglove.dev/
    • 4y ago
• defrost 4y ago
  For those interested Landline the Australian farming (stock, agriculture and related) weekly news roundup [1] has been reporting on Agri-bots and automated farming regular for the past five years (and since ~1980 if you allow the early reporting on the sheep shearing robot project at UWA) [2]. In the vision augmented weed spray domain (the subject of this posted video) there has been reporting on both heavy tractor dragged units (for covering entire 1,000+ acre farms) and, perhaps more interestingly, lightweight solar powered spray bots that have minimal soil impact and intermittent deployment patterns. Weeds patch up and spotting initial patches from air drones and then deploying a light spray bot to target individual weeeds is effective in many ways; kill time before spread, fuel usage (solar), minimal total deployment, soil impact, etc. [1] https://iview.abc.net.au/show/landline https://iview.abc.net.au/show/landline [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAh2zv7TMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAh2zv7TMM
• crorella 4y ago
  This is very interesting, as a Data Eng, I'd love to see what they are doing with the huge volume of data they collect.
• curiousgeorgio 4y ago
  It's cool technology, but let's be careful here. If we've learned anything about technology in the past few years, it's that the benefits usually come with a host of new problems. Cars, phones, and many critical pieces of infrastructure are quickly becoming impossible to service or fix by anyone but their manufacturers. Even normal operation relies on services that can be shut down which the flip of a remote switch. Not a huge problem in the individual case, but when our farming relies on similar technology, threats like cyberattacks, bugs, datacenter outages, chip supply issues, political disagreements, etc all become major national threats really quickly. Granted, farming has had sophisticated technology for quite a few years now, but smarter AI systems will inevitably involve more interaction with cloud services, and at that point, we're setting ourselves up for some scary possibilities.
• yayitswei 4y ago
  Title should be "Sniper robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals". That additional word gives a lot more context.
• KingLancelot 4y ago
  That’s a really cool and innovative way to fix the world without using pesticides, use lil robots.
• jldugger 4y ago
  Designing things like this was part of my embedded engineering project coursework 20 years ago. Obviously we didnt have CV and had to rely on heueristics like 'weeds have a different spectogram in near IR' but the idea has been a long time coming.
• bjt2n3904 4y ago
  Taking the ideas of big tech, and applying them to a low tech area is sure to make things better. /s The tool used to be a pipe and wheels. Now the tool is a five figure contraption with millions of lines of code, hundreds of moving parts, and extremely specific high tech things that aren't easy to replace. People are drunk on high tech, and have forgotten that simple is good.
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• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Chemicals are maybe the smallest cost of agriculture. Used to be < $10/acre. Costs for equipment and labor >> So saving even 95% is maybe not a compelling economical argument to use this.
  • Arn_Thor 4y ago
    The environmental argument is huge, though. And there must be some monetary value in being able to sell your product as X% more environmentally friendly?
    • JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      The private farmer is operating on thin margins. They are ecologists to be sure; their soil is their life. But no, not just to get some enviro-theatre stamp, they'll pay $0 for that. And there's a lot of FUD about ag chemicals. Check rivers - the chemical problems are downstream from cities, where an urban dweller can dump as much whatever on their lawn as they like (and they do). While ag is restricted and regulated.
      • Arn_Thor 4y ago
        No, the farmer is obviously not going to do this "just because". But if there's a market for organic produce sold to consumers at a markup, why wouldn't there be a market for something like this? Ag is regulated, for sure (and for good reason!), but it's still a huge polluter. And yes, let's regulate domestic chemical use while we're at it!
        • JoeAltmaier 4y ago
          Oh it's regulate (domestic). Long paragraph on every bottle of weedkiller etc. You ever read that? Farmers do. But no, residential customers just pull the trigger until the weed starts to curl or whatever, and then the sprinkler runs and it all goes down to the creek.
  • KaiserPro 4y ago
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• lawrenceyan 4y ago
  Given the computer vision component is the hard part, why stick with traditional pesticides? Is there any limitation stopping lasers from being viable?
  • tomcam 4y ago
    Lasers would require massive amounts of energy for this application
  • rbabich 4y ago
    A graphic in the middle of the video suggested that the herbicide being used (in one particular case) was acetic acid, i.e. vinegar.
    • lawrenceyan 4y ago
      Oh nice okay, the main concern I had was continued usage of existing pesticides. Acetic acid assuming that works actually sounds pretty great!
• chatterhead 4y ago
  Would very much like to see this kind of tech miniaturized for the use in homesteading. Would be nice to have autonomous cultivation at home. Would make having a lawn useful again.
• jeffrogers 4y ago
  Some portion of the vision and spray tech was invented long ago by Patchen Selective Spray Systems. At some point, I believe John Deere bought the company.
• Animats 4y ago
  "Never been done before, in any field?" Er, no. * John Deere, has "See and spray". * Robovator * Carbon Robotics Laser Weeder * Ecorobotics solar powered autonomous weeder. Your choice of chemical, laser, or mechanical weed killing. The first two above are production products.
  • krypty28 4y ago
    It's spelled Ecorobotix (I work there :-)). We have two machines, ARA a mounted-sprayer and AVO the solar powered autonomous weeder you are talking about. https://ecorobotix.com/en/ https://ecorobotix.com/en/ Ask me anything ;-)
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      Anything? :D What does your stack look like? Do you use ROS or something more in-house?
      • krypty28 4y ago
        something more in-house, mostly in C++.
    • Mistletoe 4y ago
      What herbicides do you spray? How much will Avo cost?
  • PoignardAzur 4y ago
    It's funny too look at the difference between the "See and spray" demonstration video and the "Robovator" video. The "See and spray" video feels very corporate, with lots of 3D renders and piano music and marketing actors making awkward jokes. The "Robovator" video is to the point, only shows on-the-field live videos, with no music and barely any flourish, to the point of being incredibly dry. I wonder which one would work best on farmers. The corporate one feels more polished, but the simpler one feels more honest.
• jdkee 4y ago
  Not sure why they use chemicals instead of a mechanical hand that simply grasps and unroots the weed.
  • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
    It's much easier and much much faster and more effective to use chemicals.
• hericium 4y ago
  It still uses some "95% less" chemicals to kill plants. Why not laser, some pull-from-ground mechanism or scissors to get rid of unwanted plants?
  • bluGill 4y ago
    Cultivators used to be very common before chemical sprays. They did work, but the energy - read CO2 emissions - was a lot higher. You are dragging some metal through the ground - think of aerodynamic problems on steroids. Now there is opportunity to only put the hoe in the ground, and some are working on that. It will still use more energy than chemicals, but it only uses the energy where needed, and avoids chemical resistance so I think there is a place for it. (but see the other replies - there are other limits)
  • selcuka 4y ago
    Spray is cheaper, and when you can precisely target the weeds you can use less harmful chemicals, such as acetic acid or even hot water.
    • bluGill 4y ago
      acetic acid is more harmful than the chemicals that farmers are using, plus it is only effective in much larger quantities. Sure we use it in cooking, but that doesn't mean it is safe. Look up the SDS for various chemicals, it can be very eye opening. Some common household stuff is very dangerous.
      • selcuka 4y ago
        True. What I meant was it's not a big deal if a bit of acetic acid touches my lettuce in the field. I will add that before I consume it anyway.
  • Tade0 4y ago
    Many weeds store most of their energy/nutrients in deep roots. You cut down the visible part and shortly after that it regrows like it's nothing. The city gardening service in my neighbourhood is waging constant war on what appears to be a forest of bushes now, which they unwittingly sow and expand through cutting plants with ripe fruit. Not only do the parent plants regrow, a new generation is formed each time they do it. My relative is an agricultural engineer and her recommendation is a drop of Roundup on top of every unwanted specimen.
• travisgriggs 4y ago
  The video paid a nice compliment to the “modern farmers.” It’s the right thing to say in the video. But I’ve worked with tech in ag for 10+ years now. There are some motivated/excited early adopters. But there is still a lot of resistance. It generally feels 10-20 years behind. I’ve worked quite a bit with the very company mentioned in the video. Like any big company, it’s made up of all kinds. I’ll leave it at that.
• pmarreck 4y ago
  wouldn't it be easier/cheaper to just enclose the whole field in a giant greenhouse with a 100% controllable environment? I mean, I hear many crops are lost every year to things like floods from rainstorms that require pricey insurance coverage, the idea of having a guaranteed crop every year with no unauthorized organisms and perfect lighting and watering and nutrition seems like it would eventually more than make up for the initial construction cost of a giant greenhouse
  • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
    How on earth would that be easier. Do you know how expensive greenhouses are?
  • tomcam 4y ago
    Far too expensive and not remotely close to doable. Greenhouse environments are actually pretty difficult to control. They are very much prone to ventilation problems, pests, mold, and fungi.
• metaljr 4y ago
  Can this happen in developing countries like India?
  • laserbeam 4y ago
    Anything can, but most likely it won't happen there first.
  • balaji1 4y ago
    It will happen. India will follow anything the West does (good and bad). Disclaimer: I don't know much about state of Indian farms today.
• fbn79 4y ago
  I;m curios how much the AI affect the chemicals usage. I mean, from the video looks like the less chemicals comes mainly from the jet spray system. The AI could limit the jet spray zone, but how much? Is the game worth the candle?
  • KaiserPro 4y ago
    The AI is just object recognition. Its not rocket science anymore. Because you can now identify the weed's location to within 15mm, (down from >5meters) you can use much smaller, moveable sprayers to apply the chemical, rather than just spraying the entire field.
• bitL 4y ago
  On one hand, this will maximize crop per area. On the other hand, it will kill off all insects that require diverse sets of plants, causing issues in the food chain above. The long-term consequences are unknown, likely not good.
  • bluSCALE4 4y ago
    I'd think you'd be able to identify good and bad bugs. If you mean killing off bad bugs will have unknown consequences, then yeah, probably.
    • zeckalpha 4y ago
      Some good bugs need plant diversity.
    • lm28469 4y ago
      It's not the chemicals that kill bugs afaik, just the fact that what was once a very diverse eco system became XX sqkm of the same plant growing on basically dead soil This robot would not change that problem What we'd need is sustainable farming with crop rotation and lots of diversity, but this is less efficient and farmers are already not making a ton of profit
    • bitL 4y ago
      Good bugs often need bad bugs to thrive, so do birds.
  • quixoticelixer- 4y ago
    What do you think currently happens in most fields? I'll give you a hint. They dont just let weeds grow.
    • bitL 4y ago
      It's already a problem, I agree. Another big problem is the increasing measurable presence of those chemicals in pastry/bread/flour these days, with unknown long-term effects.
• zeckalpha 4y ago
  No mention of biological control and using insects as robots here? That's fine.
• z9znz 4y ago
  Technically this is very cool. But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. The future will be something like, or at least based on, vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) automated farms. The best hope we have for solving food needs AND climate problems is to let as much earth as possible go wild, and reduce and optimize our footprint. Actually that's not correct - the best hope we have is to allow human population growth to go negative and also do smarter things.
  • krzat 4y ago
    Plants need energy to grow, and the easiest way of providing that energy is direct sunlight. Which means that vertical won't work too well. I suppose if you wanted be really space efficient, you could use nuclear energy to cultivate yeast.
    • z9znz 4y ago
      In much of the developed world, solar energy doesn't come from directly above, it comes from a much lower angle. Trapezoidal shaped buildings can collect a great deal of direct sunlight. And further, with reflectors it's possible to direct and concentrate this where it is most needed.
  • BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Unless you can recreate the astonishing diversity of of a regular ecosystem in a box, I don't want this spacecraft. Fruits and vegetable taste is already steadily decreasing and I have more and more trouble sourcing something decent despite having way more budget. I also assume that, like everything with complex systems, we are missing the forest for the tree and we will discover tons of health issues related to this in the future.
  • klabb3 4y ago
    > But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. First, you're underselling it. 95% less pesticides is huge. If that's economically viable we're a LOT better off. I have my doubts since it's clearly a PR video, but still. Secondly, the analogy falls short. The goal of horses and cars is transportation of goods and people, which is easy to measure and cost. Agriculture is about utilizing immensely complicated biological systems to deliver nutrition to people. We don't know everything about nutrition, let alone everything that contributes to making nutritious food. That's why we always look for minimal modifications to biological systems in order to tweak it to our liking. The same is true for say medicine; we don't design an artificial organ if we can avoid it, we usually aim for something like a simple chemical compound that triggers an existing response that helps the organ function normally, as defined by our existing biology. We may be quite advanced species, but biology is not exactly something we master. > vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) Well, sounds more convenient for humans, that's true. But if you take nutrition out of the system you have to replace it with something, which I don't think we've figured out.
• deleted 4y ago
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• StreamBright 4y ago
  Finally something that gives us the hope that we can use technology the right way.