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If driverless tractors can be made lighter in weight, they could also help in reducing how much the heavy machines cause soil compaction. https://en.wikipedia.
by sampo 1y ago
If driverless tractors can be made lighter in weight, they could also help in reducing how much the heavy machines cause soil compaction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_compaction_(agriculture)#Causes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_compaction_(agriculture)#...
- adregan 1y agoSurely the weight of a tractor pales in comparison to the person sitting inside? The heavy weight is for that big engine with a lot of torque. Can a lighter weight tractor pull its load?
- Kirby64 1y agoI’d assume all the functionality inside the cab, the space needed, seat, controls, windscreen, AC inside the cabin, etc, add up to quite a bit of weight. If you went truly driverless without a cabin you could save a ton of weight.
- bluGill 1y agoMaybe a ton at the most - but the tractor weights far more than a ton. Actually more weight is a good thing in tractors because that allows for more traction.
- hollerith 1y agoIs that really true? The heavier the tank, the more often it gets stuck and needs to be pulled out by other vehicles.
- saalweachter 1y agoTractors tend to spread their load with more, gianter, wider tires. The trade-off for making the tractor larger is that you can pull wider and multiple or multi-function implements to do the entire thing faster in one pass. The larger contact patch for having an absurd number of wheels reduces soil compaction and reduces the chance you get stuck; working in fewer passes further reduces soil compaction and prevents you from getting stuck (since in the ideal case, you're doing one pass on solid ground, and never driving over tilled soil).
- bluGill 1y agoTractors get stuck when they drive in mud (and other mud like soils) all the time. However when driving on not-mud it is true. That is the trade off, the heavier you are the more care you need to take about mud. I suspect tanks get stuck often in part because that is fun and in part because they need to train troops how to get them unstuck and so they intentionally send tanks into mud - which is to say in a real war the generals might (should) avoid getting stuck, but in training it is important to get stuck often. I'm not a military expert though, but that is my opinion on tanks.
- Kirby64 1y agoMore weight over specific areas is good. By removing weight from the cab, you can add it in places you actually want it. I.e. over the wheels.
- bluGill 1y agoTractors are not cars - weight balance doesn't make nearly as difference. Between lower speeds, lack of suspension, and all wheel drive it doesn't matter.
- Kirby64 1y agoWeight balance absolutely makes a difference. If you don’t have enough weight on the front of the tractor, for instance, certain implements are nonfunctional. You need to balance weight from front to back. Standard issue parts of tractors is adding weight boxes to either the front or back of the tractor to balance the weight of the implement on the other side.
- bluGill 1y agoFair enough - but the humans and the need for a cab is not significant. Those weights are still added based on the implement, and removed for other operations. They are also heavier than the cab + human in many cases. They are also added in front of the front axle, or behind the rear, while the human weight affects both axles (not evenly, but close enough)
- Kirby64 1y agoSo, you're agreeing with me then? Removing a cab and a human removes at minimum 300-500 lbs (when you account for human weight, all the framing, window glass, HVAC components, seats, screens, etc etc) which is balanced somewhat evenly across both axles. That means you can take that weight, and use only a portion of it to balance the tractor. Less weight overall.
- 1y ago
- scythe 1y agoWhat you could achieve with a driverless tractor is using two smaller ones instead of one big one. Since the driver's effective wage leaves the cost equation, the number of tractors can potentially be much larger. Come to think of it, this might also benefit small landholders eventually by reducing the minimum amount of land required to fund a single tractor.
- bluGill 1y agoI can't figure out how to link, but if you search me you will see elsewhere that I explained that bigger is better for the soil. Most small landholders should sell and move to the city. You need a fair amount of size to make a decent living selling something cheap. Though my biggest worry is the medium sized farmers - wasting $10/acre in extra chemicals when you have 600 acres is only $6000 - you probably won't even notice it and in any case not wasting it costs investment too. When you have 6000 acres though that $10 is a larger number and you can afford to put a lot of money in better whatever to not waste it.
- rangestransform 1y agoThe American voter is too ideologically attached to the idea of the small family farm and opposed to the big scary boogeyman corporation to support any policy that encourages consolidation of farming and farmers to move to th city
- bluGill 1y agoNot just American - most of Europe is even worse.
- scythe 1y agoIn order to link, you right-click (or equivalent) on the time stamp of the post, which on your comment currently says "4 hours ago". That creates a link like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889842 > if you search me you will see elsewhere that I explained that bigger is better for the soil. I read through your argument here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889514 These claims are interesting but I did not find information to substantiate them with a brief search. I did find this: https://mupages.marshall.edu/sites/nexus/2025/01/17/types-of-tractors-and-their-impact-on-soil-compaction/#gsc.tab=0 https://mupages.marshall.edu/sites/nexus/2025/01/17/types-of... > Most small landholders should sell and move to the city. Economically, this has been true for decades irrespective of developments in autonomous vehicles. But city life is miserable, and there will always be people trying to escape it on the farm.
- bluedino 1y agoEven a small utility tractor is over 10,000lbs
- bluGill 1y agoDriverless tractors may allow for bigger, heavier machines which would be better yet. The bigger the better because soil compaction goes up at a sub-linear rate to weight. While the soil compaction is worse for a heavier tractor where it touches the soil, the heavier tractor can handle a wider pass which means it overall doing much less damage vs a smaller tractor that would need to do several passes touching more soil to get the same work done. This is also why tracks are often worse than tires - even though tires compact the ground more where they touch the soil, the track touches more soil in a turn and thus does more damage in a turn than you save in the row! Of course different soils are different. You need to discuss the particulars of an individual field before you can make a judgement on what is best. But overall bigger is better.
- xhkkffbf 1y agoPresumably the weight is there because it helps the tractors pull. I don't think the human is a small percentage. How could you reengineer the system to get the right traction without the weight?
- aaronbaugher 1y agoTractors are made heavy for traction (hence the name), not for safety. In addition to the weight of the tractor itself, fluid is often added to the tires for extra weight, and weights added to the front for more traction and to keep the front down when pulling a heavy load. You can gain some traction by going from tires to tracks, as some modern tractors do, but you still need a certain amount of weight or you're just going to spin when you're trying to pull a 30-foot-wide chisel plow through soil and last year's stalks. Going fully autonomous might make tractors a little cheaper, if they don't need A/C and mirrors and things like that, but not lighter. And they'd still need the human stuff for occasions when it can't drive itself anyway, like moving it around the barn lot or going down the road to the next field.
- vorpalhex 1y agoCan you reduce the weight if you go slower? I realize there is still a floor threshold here. Optimizing for time matters when paying people is involved but machine costs don't matter so much per hour.
- nradov 1y agoNo, reducing speed wouldn't significantly reduce weight. Nor is there an actual need to reduce weight in the first place. Machine costs do matter by hour. Tractors and harvesters are extremely expensive and there is only a limited time window to get the work done. Going slower means that farmers would have to buy more machines.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoWhen you're tilling, planting, or harvesting, you're often trying to beat the rain or the season. You don't want to go any slower than necessary.
- s1artibartfast 1y agoSimply put, food goes bad.