[HN Gopher] Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chem...
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Robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals [video]
Author : zikohh
Score : 128 points
Date : 2022-11-16 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| zurtri wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Firmware updates happen a lot faster than evolution. I
| personally like the laser one and mechanical weeders
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Evolution might hijack the firmware update process now.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Well if the weeds adapt into corn to outwit the robot that
| wouldn't be too bad.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Fun fact, that's sort of how we got Rye.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| 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
|
| [1]https://www.thoughtco.com/rye-the-domestication-
| history-4092...
| bergenty wrote:
| 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.
| geraneum wrote:
| It's natural selection and perhaps it's more likely that they
| will go extinct in such a scenario.
| cwkoss wrote:
| 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/#:~:tex...
| .
| mfiguiere wrote:
| Mindblowing that it geo-locates and stores the centimeter scale
| position of the 4M plants of a farm!
| hzhou321 wrote:
| Nice! If the robots can sustain on solar energy, even better.
| pxue wrote:
| Just waiting for the day when the robot decides we are also a
| weed.
| sbf501 wrote:
| 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.
| bamboozled wrote:
| 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 ?
| nemo wrote:
| On the one hand, the reason for the decline of the various
| milkweed butterflies appears largely to be a result of areas
| that once supported some milkweed populations were hit with
| glyphosate which killed the host plants off at a massive scale.
| On the other hand this is already happening with chemicals
| sprayed indiscriminately, this reduces the amount that's
| sprayed, which could save farmers money, and this reduces
| glyphosate runoff which is good. Still seems to have the down
| side that if actually adopted would likely cause even more loss
| since it could be used on crops where it's avoided now. And no
| farmer is going to program it to skip milkweed or some other
| important host plants, they hate milkweed.
| abstractbill wrote:
| As the video points out (toward the end), since these robots
| recognize and work on each individual plant, they are much more
| able to deal with more biodiversity than our current methods,
| which can only scale for monocrops.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Would be super cool to have an autonomous robot that could
| get a 'kill list' and destroy every invasive plant in an area
| while leaving everything else unharmed.
|
| Could be a fantastic diversity-enabling tool.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Careful usage of cover crops and planting companion plants
| would be the opposite of that kind of approach. Companion
| plants will to some degree prevent weeds, generally without
| competing for the same nutrients as the crop. Usually they're
| selected based on their ability to attract beneficial insects
| as well, which function as a form of pest control. This is
| really only viable at the scale of gardening, but when used
| effectively, can produce much higher per-area yields.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| Having worked a farm for a few summers, my understanding is
| that we're dealing with the following set of tradeoffs.
|
| 1. If you allow weeds, you'll need to till the soil to maintain
| yields
|
| 2. If you till the soil you erode it, damaging the the long
| term health of your farm and water supplies.
|
| 3. If you drop yields globally, people starve (and farmers go
| out of business)
|
| Since eroding the soil harms biodiversity in a different set of
| ways, killing weeds seems like the least bad option. Ideally we
| wouldn't require harsh chemicals to do that but no one has
| quite figured it out.
| justinator wrote:
| Maybe it's monocrops that are problematic.
| sidibe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We would probably all be much healthier if instead of
| indirectly subsidizing make-work desk jobs, organic
| vegetable gardening was subsidized instead.
| tracker1 wrote:
| No reason the robots won't reach "other ways" at a point
| either. I think it will take a lot of combinations of
| solutions over time.
|
| I still think there should be a lot more rotation between
| general crops, animal grazing and replenishment cycles.
| "Live" soil is becoming a problem and we keep
| extracting/killing it faster than it's getting replenished.
| Not to mention all the pesticide issues.
| zwieback wrote:
| There's _" no sign of any weeds/zero biodiversity"_ and then
| there's "target the weeds that would crowd out your crop",
| which is definitely a problem in my raised beds.
| blockwriter wrote:
| I picked up grains from a farm in Dwight, Illinois that makes
| very limited use of herbicides and pesticides (it seems like
| oats are all but impossible to grow economically without some
| use of a weed killing agent). The farmer made the transition
| for his health and the health of his kids, because he was
| intuiting that certain health problems were the result of
| agricultural chemicals. I was struck, walking in their corn
| field, by the abundance of insects and weeds, and the absence
| of these quantities in standard ag corn fields struck me as
| alarming.
| abledon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| modeless wrote:
| 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.
| illys wrote:
| I saw on one of the illustrations that the spray is made of
| acetic acid. Pretty natural product, aka vinegar at low
| concentration.
|
| Well targeted as they seem to do, I guess it is a good product
| to preserve the soil and wanted plants with no harmful
| residues.
| modeless wrote:
| That's cool, yeah, precise targeting should remove the need
| for highly toxic herbicide.
| ajpgrealish wrote:
| 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
| busyant wrote:
| > I really like the idea of small, specialised robots for
| different tasks
|
| in my experience, this is the best approach. I worked at a
| few biotechs that did a lot of lab automation.
|
| the robots that could do everything were hardly ever used
| because they did everything poorly and seemed to be
| constantly in need of repair.
|
| the robots that could do one simple job were always in use.
| modeless wrote:
| The text "to take place in early 2020" and "AVAILABLE 2021"
| on that site, in November 2022, does not inspire confidence.
|
| I guess in the near term dozens of specialized robots for
| each task will be necessary, but the idea I like is teams of
| general purpose robots using simple tools to perform almost
| any task "manually". It's too early to implement that now,
| but I think it will be feasible within my lifetime.
| danielheath wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| modeless wrote:
| Yeah there are tons of really dangerous things on farms,
| like Paraquat, or power take-offs. Power doesn't have to
| be electrical to kill you. Mechanical power will do the
| job just fine.
| Jolliness7501 wrote:
| Chemicals? Do you mean dihydrogen monoxide? Horible stuff.
| Increase your cancer risc like from 0% to a 100%.
| a_t48 wrote:
| I worked with the founders of this company, sharp guys. Glad to
| see they are doing well.
| [deleted]
| vavooom wrote:
| 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.
| thesausageking wrote:
| 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
| lchengify wrote:
| 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
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| 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
| ALittleLight wrote:
| 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.
| popol12 wrote:
| Glad to hear that humans will be able to continue ruining the
| planet after the last bee dies
| jws wrote:
| 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.
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