[HN Gopher] Robot Uses Lasers to Kill 100k Weeds/Hour, Saving La...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Robot Uses Lasers to Kill 100k Weeds/Hour, Saving Land from Toxic
       Herbicides
        
       Author : chris_overseas
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2021-11-07 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
        
       | JoeAltmaier wrote:
       | Toxic herbicides? Do they mean Roundup? It's rendered inert by
       | contact with water. None remains in the soil, as I understand it.
       | 
       | I believe they're using hyperbole to market their robot. But with
       | field applications costing on the order of $10 per acre, it has
       | to be a very cheap robot to run, to compete with that.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | > It's rendered inert by contact with water. None remains in
         | the soil, as I understand it.
         | 
         | There is a growing body of evidence that the main ingredient in
         | roundup (glyphosate) is pretty harmless, but that the other
         | non-active ingredients have a pretty substantial environmental
         | and health risk, especially at high doses.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | Worth noting that it's often worth using this tech to kill the
       | crop too...
       | 
       | Most plants must be planted with the right spacing to maximize
       | yield. Plant too close and the plants will overcrowd eachother
       | and block eachothers light and yield will decrease.
       | 
       | However, not every plant gets the best start in life. Some may
       | grow slowly or not at all, have roots hit a rock, or have a host
       | of other issues.
       | 
       | By deliberately planting the seeds 'too close', but then
       | deliberately killing the ones who don't get off to a great start,
       | you can actually get an _even higher_ crop yield.
       | 
       | As soon as lasers on farm machinery are common, this can be done
       | at scale.
        
       | fumblebee wrote:
       | The Small Robot Company in the UK, whose "Head of Intelligence"
       | worked at DeepMind for 7 years, is another such company working
       | on this (and other) problem(s).
       | 
       | Their solution has three robots named Tom, Dick, and Harry. Tom
       | maps the field, assessing soil conditions and weeds. Dick zaps
       | weeds. And Harry is the haulier of nutrients for crops.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-11-07 23:02 UTC)