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An AI robot is spotting sick tulips to slow disease through Dutch bulb fields
- inglor_cz 3y agoI wonder if it is connected to the cloud. There is an obvious route of abuse for ransomware: reprogram the bot to destroy healthy tulips as well and demand payment.
- suprfsat 3y agoSmart, there is no known upper bound to what the Dutch will pay for a tulip.
- codetrotter 3y agoI am reminded of a certain scene from a certain TV show. In particular, the very end of said scene. https://youtu.be/kl6rsi7BEtk https://youtu.be/kl6rsi7BEtk
- joseda-hg 3y agoUnlike most other Ransomware there's at least the option of actually pulling the (maybe) proverbial plug on the bot As long as it's not run Lights out they should be safe
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago[flagged]
- optimalsolver 3y ago[flagged]
- ikari_pl 3y ago[flagged]
- hoseja 3y ago[flagged]
- asimovfan 3y agoIs there a source for this?
- tutfbhuf 3y agoIt is only slightly related to the keywords "Dutch" and "tulips", but it is likely an interesting wiki article for the average HN user: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- Retr0id 3y ago[flagged]
- pjmorris 3y agoA new tulip mania, but with robots? [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- escapecharacter 3y agoMulti hype cycle drifting!
- hathym 3y agowe are not far from an AI mania
- pvaldes 3y agoTulip mania was created by the problem that the robots try to fix.
- lawik 3y ago[flagged]
- stingraycharles 3y agoIt’s still a huge export for our country. If it wasn’t profitable it wouldn’t make sense, but it’s very profitable.
- diggan 3y agoNo joke: > In 2022, the EU exported just over €100 million worth of orchid, hyacinth, narcissi, and tulip bulbs to countries across the world, according to statistics published by Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, on 6 April. > Of this total, 81% of exports came from the Netherlands, which is almost synonymous with tulips and exports many of the flowers and their bulbs. > The Dutch exported €81.9 million-worth of tulips to countries outside the EU. The next biggest exporter is Lithuania at just €6.7 million. https://www.brusselstimes.com/450559/the-netherlands-exported-e82-million-in-tulips-and-bulbs-last-year https://www.brusselstimes.com/450559/the-netherlands-exporte...
- xxs 3y agomost of the produce is consumed within the EU/EEA, though
- diggan 3y agoYes, this is talked about in the linked article too: > Plants and bulbs are mostly exported to other European countries. Switzerland is the EU’s main partner for these products, accounting for 31% of EU exports (or €31.3 million). The UK also imported €21.4 million, Norway €11.5 million, Russia €9.4 million, and Ukraine €5.5 million.
- xxs 3y agoNo really. They are ALL outside the EU. Norway is in the EEA, though. Just because they are European countries it doesn't make them EU, which the article doesn't mention. The point is that the business within the EU is much larger than the export outside.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoUnsure how killing the bulb and leaving it in the field leads to a reduction in the virus spread.
- Waterluvian 3y agoMaybe it’s sexually transmitted.
- bell-cot 3y agoI'd figure: bulb is dead ==>> plant cells in bulb are dead ==>> virii in the bulb can't reproduce (since that requires living cells). If (say) they know that the disease is infectious (to nearby tulips) mostly later in the course of infection, then "catch early, kill, leave in place" could make perfect sense.
- Luc 3y agoThe first virus they're trying to keep in check is called TBV, Tulip Breaking Virus. It spreads through aphids. The infected plants are sprayed with Roundup and die, so aphids won't feed on them.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThanks!
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoFun fact™: Tulip Breaking Virus (TBV) was the cause of 16th-century "tulip mania," as it causes the petals to have swirls of different colors [on infected "white" bulbs, it is most-striking!].
- swayvil 3y agoStating via insinuation is so last millennium.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoIt's going to be interesting what yield improvements we get from AI and robotics.
- vages 3y agoQuite sure the tulip robot company will turn a profit on this quicker than most generative AI companies do with their products.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI'm not convinced, said AI companies have millions of users through e.g. Discord networks already. Plus the market is a lot more constrained.
- KaiserPro 3y ago> said AI companies have millions of users through e.g. Discord networks already. How many of them are paying customers? how much of the company's reserves are being used to subsidise day to day running of the service? what happens to the user base when you stop giving free access? this kind of product is normally a service with a contract and upfront cost for the user. ($200k for the machine) with an on going support contract.
- hackable_sand 3y agoThe overhead is much lower for software to begin with. We can consider the ratio of hardware manufacturers to even the hobbyist developer who makes a few bucks on YouTube. Either way, multinationals are running out of ink signing their seats on spaceship AI and they pay in stacks. The critical test is achieving escape velocity for each individual GenAI "solution" (call it what you want...). Software giants with compute access are windmilling free models every day, hardware is racing to capture that compute, and those GenAI companies are entrenching their contracts while the competition is still hot. Once they have the contracts it's just build build build until another AI winter or possibly a nuclear winter.
- wiremine 3y agoAgreed. Discriminative AI, in general, is further through the hype cycle than generative AI, and this is a clear value proposition with clear financials. And, really, they're two sides of the same coin. I could imagine the tulip robot using leveraging speech-to-control LLMs in the future. Something like: "Move to field 17 and focus on the Pink Diamonds"
- whitehexagon 3y agoReminds me of my old cycle ride through the Dutch tulip fields to work and back. One day fields and fields were just dropping dead. Turns out it was an intentional 'slaughter', probably to put the plant energy back into the bulbs? Sad to see. But I feel very lucky to have spent time living and working there, amazingly friendly place.
- berkes 3y agoIndeed. These bulbs don't grow in these large fields for being pretty, but because it takes several years and at least one bloom before the bulbs can be sold, planted and start blooming. I've grown some bulbs from seed, but it takes years. Much easier to buy bulbs that have bloomed before. And, indeed, the plant itself will drop the leaves soon after being pollinated to store all that in the bulb for next year.
- rollulus 3y agoFor tulips, growers cut the flowers indeed so that the plant spends no energy on it.
- projektfu 3y agoIn my neighborhood, this is made more efficient by deer.
- qzw 3y agoManual weed/insect control is one of the areas I’m really hoping will be a principal benefit of AI and robotics. Imagine replacing a large portion of the chemicals currently used in agriculture with physical means of elimination. That would get rid of a huge source of environmental and ecological damage.
- amarcheschi 3y agoThere are some softwares to recognize and track insects given a video feed, I had to search them for a course in uni involving agritech, eg https://github.com/kimbjerge/insectTracking https://github.com/kimbjerge/insectTracking There are paid SaaS as well Ninja edit I find agritech in its entirety very interesting, you have startups like constellr that aim to provide insights on your crops with satellite data, and public projects like copernicus that give you access for free to satellitar data of the whole world - and a new scan is done every 5 days -, although satellite resolution still doesn't go under 10/20m I think
- jxf 3y agoHarvesting is also a good use case; many crops cannot be harvested in any reliable way besides by hand.
- bumby 3y agoSaffron comes to mind. It's my understanding that the price is crazy high simply because it's delicate work that has to be done by hand
- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoIn glass houses it’s already possible to solve most issues without chemicals, but still happens often. Farmers in general are very risk averse. Flower fields are terrible chemical wise, much worse then food due to less strict rules
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- berkes 3y ago
- cloudbonsai 3y agoFound a clip that shows how this robot works: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UwrXj4as6LA&t=18 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UwrXj4as6LA&t=18 It's very cool. The machine is basically a very big overhead scanner that slowly moves over hills. Seems that this design is pretty much applicable to other crops (such as potatoes...) as well.
- leoff 3y agowhy have a truck doing this? Couldn't this be a much lighter and efficient structure with just the camera and robot arm?
- 3D30497420 3y agoGuessing it makes it more flexible to use since it is self-contained, so it could be used on whatever size or configuration of field. It sounds like a gasoline engine? That seems an interesting choice.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoMakes sense; (red) diesel is already in use on farm fields, one tank lasts for ages, loads of power, doesn't need to be quiet since it's in fields, it's lighter weight so less soil impact, and water doesn't affect it much. Downsides is of course pollution etc, even if diesel engines have gotten a lot cleaner over the years.
- berkes 3y agoIf you think of it, though: all the pollutants, heavy metals, and other chemicals that are in the X liter of diesel a farmer burns per yet, ends up on, and in the crops. We eat that. (and thus need to wash it, to mitigate that)
- lukan 3y agoThere is usually worse stuff on the fields than diesel, but this is about flowers which do not get eaten. And the same design would likely work with a battery at some point in the future. But currently diesel is standard on the fields.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wiremine 3y agoI'll take your Tulip killer and raise you one. An almond tree mummy remover: A robot with Airsoft guns. https://www.insighttrac.com/ https://www.insighttrac.com/
- gwbas1c 3y agoWhat is a mummy (within the context of an almond tree)? I can't even find the definition (in context) in the dictionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mummy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mummy
- mda 3y agoApparently a mummy is an almond nut that was not harvested and remained on the tree. Some pests depend on these to survive the winter, so having them on trees is a risk.
- gwbas1c 3y agoThanks! It's always important to be conscious of industry jargon and define it. (The landing page should probably have some kind of definition of what a mummy is. It doesn't need to be detailed.)
- wiremine 3y agoAgreed. The target audience knows exactly what it is. (BTW, I wasn't involved directly)
- K0balt 3y agoThis is adjacent to some ideas I’ve been working on in my farm. My focus is more on weed control though. At first the title gave me a vision of a rage fueled automaton laying waste to awesome tulips lol.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- odyssey7 3y agoImagine a software bug that wipes out an entire cultivar.
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoWhat was interesting to me was how expensive this thing was, I wonder how much of that cost came from the software. Elon mentioned how they're trying to create a "world model" for their Tesla FSD, which has enabled them to use the same software for Optimus. I'd imagine the future will be large "ready to go" Ai packages, which companies would tweak to their liking.
- chefandy 3y agoSeems to me that smaller, more focused models would be more practical. Why would the tulip machine need to know the rules of canasta or the history of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I wonder if there's going to be a persistent monolith/microservices cycle.
- senseiV 3y agowell world model in the context of the tulip fields, so models could be finetuned+sheared to drop size and remain effective
- mkmk 3y agoIsn't cost typically a function of the value a product provides the purchaser, rather than a function of the inputs required to create it?
- j-a-a-p 3y agoWasn't it 180.000 EUR? Once you start buying equipment for the industry you will discover that consumer price levels do not apply here. Perhaps it is the lower scale, or it is the burden of compliance.
- lynx23 3y agoThere you have it, "the future of nursing homes"... All the material for a dystopian sci-fi book, fueled by a single spooky headline. Matrix and A Scanner Darkly mixed up into something... that makes you even more affraid of the future.
- amelius 3y agoSide question to anyone working in this field. Aren't you afraid that the next wave of AI (generic robot that can be taught to do anything) will destroy your business model?
- I_ 3y agoAnyone working in this field is likely to be aware how woeful current actuators and power sources can be in a machine designed solely for one purpose, let alone how they might be in a machine designed for every single purpose.
- sema4hacker 3y agoI've been waiting for someone to create a robot that rolls along the edges of our freeways picking up all the litter.
- bamboozled 3y agoIt's funny we actually need these because people can't stop throwing trash out the window.
- sema4hacker 3y agoI've never witnessed anyone do that, but I've often seen litter flying out of pickup truck beds.
- johnea 3y agoWow! How did we ever survive without that!
- ShitHNDorksSay 3y ago"Tech and AI solves life's issues." Some dorky H1B Indian stuck in the Bay area.
- DesiLurker 3y agowe already have crypto and NFT mania so might as well bring back the AI-infused Dutch tulip bulbs hype now.
- Clifford33 3y ago[dead]