[HN Gopher] Move over, tractor - The farmer wants a crop-sprayin...
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Move over, tractor - The farmer wants a crop-spraying drone
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-05-24 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Headline: "The Farmer Wants a Crop-Spraying Drone"
|
| Article reality: CEO starts a drone company and tries to get
| farmers to want them.
|
| > Convincing farmers to use drones instead of tractors was tough
|
| > Today, selling farmers on the benefits of drones is a big part
| of Erickson's job.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Wouldn't this compete with piloted crop-dusting _aircraft_ ,
| not tractors?
|
| Also, what next? Farming - but with _AI_
| xnx wrote:
| > Also, what next? Farming - but with AI
|
| Not sure if you're joking, but this is a big area of
| research/innovation even prior to the latest LLM-fueled hype-
| cycle
|
| From 2016: How a Japanese cucumber farmer is using deep
| learning and TensorFlow
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-
| learning/h...
| a012 wrote:
| Yes.If we could scale the number of robots that work
| autonomously to pickup/kill weeds then the amount of
| herbicide could be reduced significantly.
| ysofunny wrote:
| the real economic issue is which is cheaper, people or
| robots?
|
| keep in mind that robots are made by people, which strongly
| suggests using people directly is cheaper
|
| the real social issue is you must meddle with the self-
| development of said people in order to keep it cheap,
| simply put you must make sure those people stay poor. in
| modernity this happens across countries (i.e. my theory
| that countries as a whole are kept poor). I call that
| practice neocolonialism
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Why do you suppose that robots being made by people means
| that using people directly is cheaper?
|
| By that logic, no factories or anything would be
| automated, as it would be cheaper to use the people
| directly rather than having people build the automation.
|
| Why do farmers even use tractors? Someone had to build
| that tractor. Wouldn't it be cheaper to hire the people
| to plant the crop directly?
| ysofunny wrote:
| because a robot costs the cost of the robot plus the cost
| of the people making the robot
|
| whereas people only cost what people cost.
|
| the real reason we do have technology is because keeping
| people poor is terribly evil, and doing that only to have
| cheap things is somehow even worse. which is the real
| point I'm making by the way
|
| moreover, we're all missing another subtle point I
| omitted. herbicides are even cheaper than people, robots,
| or any combination of them. but as it turns out, killing
| the soil is also a pretty bad thing to do.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| this site has really gone downhill
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > moreover, we're all missing another subtle point I
| omitted. herbicides are even cheaper than people, robots,
| or any combination of them.
|
| Is this because herbicides are not made by people?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > keep in mind that robots are made by people, which
| strongly suggests using people directly is cheaper
|
| It's much, much cheaper to pay someone to operate an
| excavator than to hire many people to dig the ditch by
| hand.
|
| This is how modern economies improve everyones' lives:
| labor-saving devices.
| ysofunny wrote:
| nevermind that whole tired thing about how forcing people
| to stay poor is evil
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| > keep in mind that robots are made by people, which
| strongly suggests using people directly is cheaper
|
| Possibly the biggest logical miss I've ever seen on this
| site. This would only be true if one person built one
| robot ever, and that robot was only as efficient as them.
|
| Now would something like this https://carbonrobotics.com
| be cheaper than dumping chemicals on your field? I don't
| know. We could certainly do without the negative
| downstream effects of various pesticides and weed killers
| though.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I have a modest proposal. Instead of using people to grow
| food we could instead just eat people. That would solve
| unemployment, world hunger, and overpopulation.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Ah, a Jonathan Swift fan I see.
| adolph wrote:
| To get around legal issues one could just focus on
| fetuses instead of birthed persons. Pluses include:
| fetuses are a renewable resource; if harvested early
| enough, bone tissue is not crunchy; no need to clean out
| fecal material from the abdomen. This will probably be
| especially helpful in future space exploration.
| krisoft wrote:
| > keep in mind that robots are made by people, which
| strongly suggests using people directly is cheaper
|
| And that is why my roof is held up by people I hire to
| hold it up. Bricks would complain less and would be more
| reliable, but they are more expensive than people because
| bricks are made by people.
|
| Except that is not how the cost of things works, is it?
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _And that is why my roof is held up by people I hire to
| hold it up. Bricks would complain less and would be more
| reliable, but they are more expensive than people because
| bricks are made by people._
|
| I should have downvoted you for this: I laughed so hard
| it woke my wife from a nap in the next room.
| ysofunny wrote:
| but farming already is managing some other actor/agent-like
| being into doing your bidding and then eating it
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Wouldn't this compete with piloted crop-dusting aircraft,
| not tractors?
|
| Yes, and given that flying crop dusters is pretty dangerous
| (old, shoddily maintained aircraft and "runways", low
| altitudes over rough terrain) and exposes the fields to lead
| from the fuel, it's high time to get rid of that.
|
| A drone with an automated recharger+resupply base can operate
| entirely on its own.
| acc_297 wrote:
| yeah my grandpas brother died crop dusting in Saskatchewan
|
| That was a long time ago but I'm not sure the profession
| has gotten much safer
| cratermoon wrote:
| > lead from the fuel
|
| Better late than never, I guess, but the FAA has approved
| unleaded 100 octane. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-
| media/all-news/2022/september/...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'm aware - but until the last morons get the message it
| will be another few decades.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > Also, what next? Farming - but with _AI_
|
| https://carbonrobotics.com/
| betimsl wrote:
| This is much more efficient than a diesel tractor that
| struggles to pull itself.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Tractors famously (its in the name) can pull many times their
| own weight using a fuel that is cheap and energy dense
| compared to drone batteries... Farmers don't have enough
| margin for their most expensive capital outlay to not be
| extremely good at what they need it for.
|
| Tractors can carry many tons of liquid that needs to be
| sprayed on crops, as well as an implement that can spray a
| many yards wide swath of crops.
|
| A tractor is also something that is needed for the rest of
| the farming and harvesting operation.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| They're pretty durable, too.
|
| My grandfather's tractor has been running on machine oil,
| curses, and cheap diesel for 40+ years before he sold it
| off due to age.
| jakewins wrote:
| That doesn't seem at all obvious - this thing has to spend a
| ton of energy on keeping the payload away from gravity that a
| tractor does not.
|
| It also has a pretty high capex bar to clear - it can't
| replace a tractor, the farmer needs that still for
| implements, so it is purely additive in the capex area :/
|
| Still, looks super duper cool and presumably has some tricks
| it can do a tractor can't!
| cushychicken wrote:
| Why is this a better idea than a pull behind sprayer that goes
| behind a tractor and dispenses crop spraying intelligently with
| AI when it recognizes pests?
|
| Seems like a simpler system than using drones, which can fly
| about 20 mins max on one charge.
| AShyFig wrote:
| The advantage flying sprayers have over a tractor is loss.
| Driving a tractor through a field will crush a percentage of
| your crop, and a percentage of that crushed crop will never
| recover.
|
| Depending on the field that percentage can be as high as 10.
| Depending on the crop, the value you gain by aerial
| application can be in the 10s of thousands of dollars.
| barbazoo wrote:
| By not having to drive a tractor through it regularly maybe
| crops can also be planted closer together? Although,
| there's still the harvesting at the end at which point
| you'd lose those gains again.
|
| > Driving a tractor through a field will crush a percentage
| of your crop
|
| Even if there are "tracks" to account for the tractor's
| wheels? Nothing would have been planted there in the first
| place?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Lol I was going to say: None of the hundreds of square
| miles of crops where I grew up have this problem. Maybe
| corn and soybean fields omit the structure to attempt to
| get more yield? In which case, crushing some of it is
| still likely a positive yield compared to not planting
| ruts.
| AShyFig wrote:
| Crush becomes a problem for us in Canola and Lentils
| during desiccation; which is a chemical application at
| the end of the season right before havest. As the name
| implies, desiccation takes a crop which might have
| variations in "greenness"/maturity and kills it all down
| to a consistent state for harvest.
|
| At this point in the crops life, the canopy is quite
| filled out, and a large portion of it is already dry. By
| driving through the feild at this time you knock the seed
| from the pod onto the ground, where it is impossible to
| harvest. Thus it is better to do desiccation from the
| air.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| I live in a rural area and there are huge grain fields
| all around me. At least for these kind of crops, the
| field is seeded 100%. There are no gaps for the tractor
| wheels. Having said that, you rarely see tractors pulling
| a sprayer in the first place anymore. Most crops around
| here are sprayed by purpose built sprayers that have tons
| of ground clearance, have relatively narrow tires, very
| wide booms, and are comparatively very light vs. a
| massive tractor. They can be built so light because they
| aren't used to pull heavy implements behind them. All
| they carry is the chemical, the spray booms, and the
| operator. Later in the season, it would be tough to pick
| out the path these things took through the field if you
| could at all. As for costs, the spraying is often done on
| contract so the farmers don't buy the sprayers in the
| first place: they pay for the service plus the chemicals.
|
| For this kind of application, I think drones have a
| snowball's chance in hell of getting any kind of traction
| with farmers in the area. Their capacity is too small,
| their runtime is too short, the area they can cover per
| unit time is too poor, etc.
| zdp7 wrote:
| You are taking a very narrow view of what a drone is. The
| MQ-9A Reaper drone has an almost 2 ton payload capacity
| and flight endurance of 27 hours. I can totally envision
| a purpose built drone that could mount a crop dusters
| spray rig. It just most likely wouldn't be an electric
| quadcopter.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Seriously? That is a completely different animal from the
| drone portrayed in the article. Anything in that league
| wouldn't be anywhere near cost effective vs. something
| like a conventional crop sprayer plane.
| tubetime wrote:
| these exist, they're called tramways but they are more
| common in europe.
| eschneider wrote:
| That's a solved problem with precision guided, self-
| steering tractors. They also remember where they planted
| crops so they won't roll over plants later.
|
| There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in agtech, most
| of it is practical, too. But yeah, guidance add-ons to a
| farmer's existing equipment has a pretty good return on
| investment for the farmer.
| bguebert wrote:
| That might be for some crops, but some like wheat are
| planted too close together to drive anything between them
| without knocking some down.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| That's an overly simplistic assertion. It depends on the
| crop, how it is planted, and maturity.
|
| There is a soy bean pest that can invade crops on my
| family's farm. If treatment is needed early, the cost
| effective solution is to drive a spray rig. Later in the
| season, that causes too much crop damage. So then it
| becomes a calculation of the loss due to pest versus cost
| of arial application.
|
| In the end, it all comes down to cost per acre and the
| benefit needs to exceed that.
| AShyFig wrote:
| This future is a lot closer than most people think, but
| is hardly a solved problem.
|
| -posted from my self driving tractor.
| tangentstar wrote:
| Carbon Robotics has a tractor attachment system that burns
| weeds with lasers. Pests can't be far behind.
| AShyFig wrote:
| NathanBuilds on YouTube has a little robot which does the
| same thing with a large magnifying glass. A concept I am
| very eager to demo on an industrial scale.
| Animats wrote:
| Deere offers that. They call it "See and Spray".[1] Their
| marketing video is terrible. An ag equipment dealer has a
| better one.[2] A neat demo is to fill the spray tank with
| water and dye, make a pass over a field, then see what it
| hit.
|
| [1] https://www.deere.com/en/sprayers/see-spray-ultimate/
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyy45qFuJ7k
| BluePen7 wrote:
| Commercial drones like this typically come with enough
| batteries to run non-stop.
|
| Even at the standard 1C charge rate, you'd only need 4
| batteries to effectively fly non-stop.
|
| In the article they mention the system was meant for rough
| terrain where they were hand-spraying because the tractor
| couldn't get there, but I guess they're working on making it
| viable for large flat farms now.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Tractors are extremely heavy and do cause soil compaction
| issues. I'm honestly not sure how much of a factor the
| compaction issues when you're also running a mono-crop
| operation and spraying regularly with fertilizers and
| poisons, but at a minimum it wouldn't help.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Thats some hip marketing, i would buy alot of things from
| someone named "Tractor - The farmer"
| throwup238 wrote:
| No the farmer doesn't. The key paragraph is at the end:
|
| _> He's currently leading development of a new type of drone--a
| scout--designed to quickly inspect fields for pest infestations
| or poor growth or to assess crop yields. But these days his job
| is more about managing his team of engineers than about doing
| hands-on engineering himself. "I'm more of a translator between
| the engineers and the market needs," he says._
|
| The spray drone idea is IMO ridiculous because a proper crop
| duster plane carries 100x the volume at only 10x the cost (or
| lower) of this drone. The scout drone on the other hand could
| give farmers new abilities that they could only replicate by
| physically walking the fields, but I'm pretty sure drone
| companies like DJI have been in this market for nearly a decade.
|
| I'd like to call complete bullshit on this line:
|
| _> These tractors can cost up to half a million dollars to
| purchase and about US $7 a hectare to operate._
|
| The vast majority of farmers don't use half million dollar
| tractors for spraying. The half million dollar beasts are for
| tilling megafarms that'd require a multi-million dollar army of
| drones to replicate just one function of the tractor (spraying -
| which isn't the main function anyway).
|
| Best case scenario they face the same issue crop duster planes
| do: Farmers usually can't afford their own plane on top of all
| the other things they need, which means they won't be able to
| afford their own drones. Most also can't really afford to hire
| them out on a regular basis because all the farmers want to rent
| them all at the same time, leading to competition over a limited
| resource.
| lettergram wrote:
| > These tractors can cost up to half a million dollars to
| purchase and about US $7 a hectare to operate.
|
| I was about to say... I use my $95k tractor to spray my 100
| acres no problem
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| And on our farm we use a tractor worth ~half of that to
| spray.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Make the tractor free and you still have to buy the spray;
| the whole world has to deal with the externalities of the
| spray.
|
| Tech solutions to reduce/eliminate spraying are what need
| to be worked on. Not drone sprayers. "Cheap" drone sprayers
| make the problem worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The spray drone idea is IMO ridiculous because a proper crop
| duster plane carries 100x the volume at only 10x the cost (or
| lower) of this drone.
|
| This is also one of the most dangerous piloting jobs there is
| and a fair number of experienced die in crashes. They have to
| fly very low across a field then turn around at the end - if
| anything goes wrong (not seeing a power line at the end of the
| field) you have no altitude to recover. Only a few pilots will
| even fly them and they tend to be in demand which means when a
| farmer wants the work done sometimes they can't get it done.
| Plus those planes are mostly from the 1970s or before - sure
| rebuilt a few times, but still overall old. There is a lot of
| room to replace a crop duster even if this is more expensive
| (and not needing a pilot could make is less expensive).
|
| > The vast majority of farmers don't use half million dollar
| tractors for spraying. The half million dollar beasts are for
| tilling megafarms that'd require a multi-million dollar army of
| drones to replicate just one function of the tractor (spraying
| - which isn't the main function anyway).
|
| A brand new John Deere R4023 sparer has a list price of $330k.
| I assume there are options, but also farmers can get various
| discounts but that still is a good price start with for
| discussion. Of course if you are buying a new sprayer you have
| more than 100 acres.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I believe the concept is that through targeted application
| rather than broadcast application, you don't NEED to carry 100x
| the volume as you would in traditional aerial applicator. You
| carry less product, but you need to use less, and therefore you
| have to purchase less. There are also the environmental
| benefits of not applying herbicide where it not actually
| needed, and benefits of not expending energy and resources to
| produce a wasted product.
|
| Also you are underestimating the cost differential between the
| drone and a crewed aircraft. The article says this guy's drone
| costs $50,000. $500,000 is going to buy you a 30 year old
| clapped out pile of crap with a radial piston engine and a
| belly full of corrosion. A new crop duster, for example a very
| common, and fairly small, Air Tractor AT-600, is going to be
| $1.7-2.0M depending on options.
|
| And, you have not accounted for the extraordinarily high
| recurring cost of operating a small turbine aircraft, including
| flight crew, ground crew, maintenance, storage and insurance.
| Fuel burn is 75 gallons per hour at $6.25 per gallon (That's
| today's price at the duster base in Linton, North Dakota, 7L2
| airport. Say hi to Mike the chief mechanic for me.) So a direct
| operating cost of $500/hour right off the bat, whether you are
| spraying or commuting. And the cost of maintaining a fixed base
| of operation (i.e. an airport.) Costs which mostly go _poof_
| with a drone you can throw in a pickup truck. And of course the
| cost of operating in a highly regulated industry such as
| ongoing training and certification, maintaining an anti-drug
| program and workforce monitoring, etc.
|
| And yes, this would clearly be marketed as a service for hire,
| as many existing agricultural services are. That is not novel
| in the industry.
| bri3d wrote:
| DJI spray drones are quite an old idea, a much better value
| than Hylio drones, and very popular in China. They're
| especially favored in smaller-acerage targeted application
| scenarios like orchards as well as specialty applications like
| terrace farms where tractors are less efficient, but they work
| OK on large-scale fields as well. An Agras T50 is $25k. That's
| not that bad compared to a normal tractor and really, really
| cheap compared to an Air Tractor, especially when you start
| considering wet cost.
|
| The big issue preventing you from seeing more of these the US
| is regulatory. Right now, agricultural drones are a huge pain
| to fly, although the situation has been improving:
|
| * The drone needs both an operator and a visual observer.
|
| * The drone needs to be within line of sight (this is easier
| when it's huge, but still a significant limitation).
|
| * The operator needs an FAA Part 107 license. Until this year
| they also needed a second-class medical as part of the
| overweight waiver process, but now third-class medicals are OK.
|
| * The operator needs a Part 137 spray license.
|
| * The drone needs to be on a special list to get a 49 USC
| Section 44807 exception (basically, a carve-out to Part 137
| allowing certain drones above 55lb to be used for agriculture).
| Until recently, this process was horrible and required specific
| authorization, experimental certificates, and all kinds of
| waivers, but thankfully it's been cleaned up.
|
| Hylio got a waiver to allow up to 3 simultaneous flights and no
| visual observer. If more of these exemptions are issued (or the
| overall regulation loosens), I suspect spray drones will
| actually become quite popular. Even with the current pilot
| limitations, it's already possible to run an agricultural spray
| business using DJI drones that easily beats traditional crop
| dusting in terms of price-per-acre. The main issue is acres
| available, since the current setup is so inefficient - there
| just isn't enough supply to really disrupt the crop dusting
| market when it comes to large megafarms. Once a single operator
| can observe autonomous flight from tens of drones at once,
| things will become quite competitive - you can buy a lot of
| T50s for the price of an Air Tractor.
|
| Fixed-wing spray drones are an even better idea than
| inefficient quadcopters, and I look forward to seeing more of
| these designs, like the Pyka Pelican, hit the market as well.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| As the other commenter pointed out, this competes with crop
| dusting, not tractors, although maybe it's possible that it could
| work for more targeted sprays? Some weeds for example are pretty
| resistant to standard herbicides, so if you could, for relatively
| low labor costs, target just those weeds, that could potentially
| be worth it.
|
| But really, I'm just looking forwards to when the current level
| of driving automation in tractors incorporates a little more
| machine vision and intelligence. I believe it is all GPS based
| right now and works in corn and other crops where there aren't
| any obstacles and there isn't really much that can go wrong.
|
| But if there was a way to have our tractor mow our orchard for us
| without hitting any trees or irrigation lines, that would be
| fantastic
| surfingdino wrote:
| > As the other commenter pointed out, this competes with crop
| dusting, not tractors, although maybe it's possible that it
| could work for more targeted sprays? Some weeds for example are
| pretty resistant to standard herbicides, so if you could, for
| relatively low labor costs, target just those weeds, that could
| potentially be worth it.
|
| Someone needs to do a cost comparison of using crop dusters vs.
| drones per square mile.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cost isn't important. the real question is labor. There are
| very few qualified crop duster pilots, and so farmers often
| have trouble getting a pilot when they need it. Few pilots go
| into this area because it doesn't pay well compared to other
| commercial flying and it is a lot more dangerous.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Well which way is it? If the demand is so high that pilots
| are difficult to come by, how can it not pay well enough to
| attract pilots? Sounds to me like the farmers need to open
| their wallets...
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > this competes with crop dusting, not tractors
|
| Crop dusting and spraying by tractors are in the same market.
| Everyone but the smallest farmers makes the comparison on
| whether crop dusting or using tractors is cheaper (including
| factors like application efficiency and crop loss from tractor
| tracks).
| xnx wrote:
| Aren't drones already in common use in farming? DJI has an entire
| agricultural series: https://ag.dji.com/
|
| I occasionally see videos of people taking short rides hanging
| from them.
| TheGlav wrote:
| Yeah, they exist. They're in use today. They're being set up to
| be a lower impact, more precise way of spraying fields
| autonomously. All the operator has to do is wait for the drone
| to spray part of the field and return when batteries and/or the
| application (spray, seed) is low. Refill, swap batteries, and
| press "continue".
| throwway120385 wrote:
| If you can automate the reloading process you can completely
| eliminate a huge time suck. Seeding probably isn't viable in
| some soils because you might actually need a drill.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| The goal of involving "smarter" agg technology should be to allow
| more complex agricultural methods without increasing manual
| workload too much. There seems to be a lot of ideas around how
| diversity can be utilized to increase both sustainability and
| yield. But there seems to be a long uphill battle against mono
| cultures before reaching some kind of disruptions since the
| margins are so thin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture
| whimsicalism wrote:
| regen agriculture is a fun little academic/artistic pursuit
| completely unrelated to the business of feeding 8 billion
| people.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Are you saying that non-monoculture practices will never give
| better yields per acre or is there a more nuanced explanation
| here?
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| In theory monocultures allow for higher yield per acre, but
| in practice it's _really_ hard to keep the soil healthy
| enough to sustain yields over time without adding
| (eventually) unsustainable amounts of fertiliser.
|
| Crop rotation and leaving land fallow for a year can get
| you some extra time, but monoculture farming practices are
| inherently destructive to the soil, and mitigating the
| damage done takes a long time.
|
| Also worth noting that a huge amount of destructive
| monoculture farming has nothing whatsoever to do with food
| production - it's for bioethanol and such.
| spearo77 wrote:
| Potato Jet has a recent video on large DJI multi rotors-
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nglJ7zZkr4Q&pp=ygUKcG90YXRvI...
| voisin wrote:
| No, the farmer wants an electric tractor, possibly with a small
| diesel engine to charge the battery as needed. Fuel is an
| insanely high cost for farmers, and the complexity of the ICE
| systems means high maintenance and repair costs too.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I was about to post that the diesel-electric technology for
| tractors just wasn't ready yet but I looked it up and
| apparently it is. Electric motors are amazing and I guess the
| efficiency lost in converting mechanical energy to electricity
| and back is partly made up for by running the engine more
| efficiently and by partly by not needing a transmission.
| tetha wrote:
| Also, farmers have room to put down wind turbines on their
| land. Quite a few of them up here in northern germany have
| picked up subsidies and are now generating power from just a
| few square meters of land. One larger farming business also
| has a biogas burner.
|
| With such a setup and a bit of energy storage somewhere,
| electric vehicles look even more attractive.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The tractors I'm more familiar with are 500hp and when in
| use they run 18+ hour days a very long way from
| infrastructure. It would be nice to replace those with
| diesel-electric for maintenance reasons but I highly doubt
| there is a viable fully electric solution. We would be more
| likely to find alternatives to plowing and other more
| efficient farming practices.
| voisin wrote:
| > a viable fully electric solution
|
| There are already major pieces of mining equipment and
| trucks for moving mining material that operate on this
| technology. If it works for them I don't see why farming
| would be more challenging.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think you'll find that this imagined generality does
| not go as far as you would like. Mines tend to be on hard
| ground while farms tend to be on dirt, make a tractor too
| heavy and it'll get bogged. When the tractor is an hours
| drive away from the nearest power outlet it just does not
| seem realistic. Diesel-electric can make a lot of sense,
| the fuel is the same and it does the same thing but more
| efficiently and with lower maintenance costs. I don't
| hate the idea of fully electric, if anyone can make the
| math work then great, but for the use case I mentioned I
| highly doubt it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Mines do this for equipment that operates a fixed track
| (they can move the track, but not too often). When the
| equipment is more than a power cord away from a grid
| connection they use diesel. However electric is so much
| cheaper than diesel they will go out of their way to have
| a less efficient mine if it is reasonably possible.
| voisin wrote:
| The technology is so good, Stellantis is putting it in the
| next gen Ramcharger trucks. Eliminates range anxiety while
| maintaining all the benefits of electric.
| pm90 wrote:
| Yeah, easy to get electricity than fuel to remote farms.
|
| Perhaps they could setup cooperatives that operate solar/wind
| farms to recharge their equipment?
| persnickety wrote:
| Like this? https://farmdroid.com/product-sheet/
| bluGill wrote:
| > small diesel engine to charge the battery as needed. Fuel is
| an insanely high cost for farmers, and the complexity of the
| ICE systems means high maintenance and repair costs too.
|
| That is what they want, but that isn't something they can get.
| A 100 horsepower tractor will be expected to deliver 100
| horsepower for 15 hours without stopping (it is common to eat
| while driving, though you will stop for a bathroom break here
| and there). That means you need to have a 100 horsepower
| engine. Contrast a Tesla which is rated at 600 horsepower - but
| realistically only can give you that for a few seconds before
| you are at speed and then only needs to deliver about 20
| horsepower. The batteries in a Tesla would run that 100
| horsepower tractor for maybe an hour, so a 20 horsepower engine
| in a Tesla could easially extend you a lot of range.
|
| I work for John Deere. I don't speak for the company. I can
| tell you that we are looking at electric for small tractors -
| there are a lot of people who only use small tractors for a
| couple hours per day (or less). We have hybrid tractors for
| some applications, but there are others that hybird isn't
| useful. The rules of chemistry tell us that a battery will
| never be useful for large tractors, and even small tractors it
| is questionable if batteries can ever be good enough to go all
| day (if you look at our electric mower the dealer is required
| to examine your lot to make sure it isn't too big). We have
| tried things like put a 1km cord on a tractor - I don't know
| what the status of that is.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Big, cheap batteries. Tractors don't care about weight or
| speed. They don't need fancy chemistries.
|
| I'd also think they could find a way to deploy a massive
| solar halo-type array since they're working in big empty
| fields.
| bentt wrote:
| I read that as... "Move Over... Tractor the Farmer wants a Crop
| Spraying Drone"
|
| Which is a sweet name for a farmer, and of course he'd want that.
| lasc4r wrote:
| For niche spraying where you can't get to the ground I'd rather
| see a robot on little slits or something. If you can get to the
| ground, well, those chemicals are heavy and drones run on pretty
| terrible batteries.
|
| >These tractors can cost up to half a million dollars to purchase
| and about US $7 a hectare to operate.
|
| >A pair of Hylio's drones cost a fifth of that, Erickson says,
| and operating them costs about a quarter of the price.
|
| About zero farmers are buying a tractor solely for spraying
| crops, but honestly if you have the money for a new tractor,
| knock yourself out with a stupid drone, why not?
| bluGill wrote:
| > About zero farmers are buying a tractor solely for spraying
| crops
|
| There are a lot of farmers that have a special tractor for
| spraying crops. They call it a sprayer and it cannot be used
| for any other tractor tasks.
| zie wrote:
| They are pretty amazing these days, they spray up to a 70ft
| wide swath at 25-30MPH:
| https://www.deere.com/en/sprayers/800r-floater/
| AShyFig wrote:
| Drones are going to be a large part of agriculture, but the
| problem isn't the technology. Imo the technology is already at a
| point where it's useful enough for me to invest in. If i wanted
| to today i could buy what i need for scouting and spraying a
| ~1000h farm from aliexpress.
|
| The problem is the regulatory environment on two fronts. First (
| in Canada) the pesticides I'd like to use are not registered for
| drone application, even if they are registered for application
| from helicopter or plane.
|
| Second, I don't have priority airspace rights. Which means I have
| to have a person watching both the drone and surrounding airspace
| for crop dusters or personal low flying aircraft. Even if I file
| a flight plan weeks ahead of time and a NOTAM [notice to all
| airmen] i am required to ground my drone if an aircraft with a
| person is nearby. Even if they have failed to file NOTAMs, which
| in the case of my local spray dudes is 100% of the time. This
| makes completing a scouting or spraying job more labour intensive
| than using a tractor because I often require a spotter at the far
| end of a field.
|
| Until the regulatory issues are sorted out, and drones can be
| operated with Beyond Visual Line of Sight rules, you won't see
| massa adoption of this tech.
|
| My drone fleet is sitting and collecting dust at the moment,
| which is a shame because they do provide valuable information.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| In the US, at least, regulatory solutions happen when large
| commercial interests get behind them. Commercial agribusiness
| is extremely powerful, so the lack of regulatory clarity will
| presumably disappear the second that large businesses decide
| they need to deploy this tech.
| 0xfae wrote:
| If the local spray pilots aren't filing their paperwork and
| presumably not getting in trouble, isn't it reasonable that no
| one would care if you did the same?
|
| It sounds like no one is enforcing those rules/laws.
| AShyFig wrote:
| They have the natural right of way. No matter who's paperwork
| isn't filled out, if a spray plane hits my drone I am at
| fault.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| NOTAMs are largely optional especially for things like making
| cropdusting passes in uncontrolled areas.
|
| In this context the local pilots aren't out of compliance
| with any rules. The regulatory issue is that for almost all
| purposes human piloted craft have priority over remotely
| piloted craft, and there isn't a good way, currently, to
| communicate with pilots in the area.
|
| Believe it or not, there are parts of the US, rural areas
| especially, where it is perfectly legal to fly an airplane
| without a radio or any other electronics.
| ivankolev wrote:
| I would think some sort of mesh beacon network on all flying
| things to enable auto-avoidance protocols, would be a logical
| technology solution?
| AShyFig wrote:
| The future of drones, especially in dense areas may require
| some sort of technological solution like that, but for the
| time being out in the boonies here I would love for the rules
| to change so that the first 300' or so of airspace above my
| property is "claimed."
|
| Enter at your own risk.
| nradov wrote:
| How is that going to work with civil VFR aircraft, including
| helicopters? ADS-B Out still isn't even required in some
| classes of airspace. The notion of retrofitting every old
| R-22 with TCAS is ludicrous.
| ivankolev wrote:
| Was just thinking out loud, as a layman, along the lines of
| how not to wait for top down regulation, but still going
| around the practical problem of avoiding in both senses,
| the actual collision and the authorities eyes on you :) I
| don't even know the acronyms you gave, going on a rabbit
| hunt now
| dheera wrote:
| In 2010 I biked through a lot of Japanese countryside and saw
| quite a few drones (of the helicopter variety) spraying crops.
| They seemed human-controlled, but still, way ahead of their
| time.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Seems inefficient. Pyka has a fixed-wing design to address the
| same market.
|
| https://www.flypyka.com/pelican-spray
| anothername12 wrote:
| I can see robotics succeeding in agriculture, but maybe not
| drones and pesticides.
|
| Robots going down the rows, physically pulling out weeds, zapping
| bugs with lasers, delivering optimal water/fertilizer right to
| the roots. Dunno if there's economy of scale available for it
| though. Maybe too specialized.
|
| Iirc, there's already a salmon farming robot that detects and
| shoots parasites with lasers.
| Sir_Viver wrote:
| In general farmers should start spraying less and, instead,
| embrace biodiversity. It's good for nature and bad for Monsanto.
| Oh, and after just one or two years the recovering diversity also
| acts on its own against vermin and pests. The result are overall
| tougher crops.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| How many acres of your own farm are you managing that way? Do
| you have before and after P&L's that you could share?
| Animats wrote:
| There seems to be a big farmer preference for buying such
| technology in the form of tractor attachments. Several companies
| have built lightweight ag robots that slowly cruise fields and
| zap weeds. They can be lightweight since they don't have to spray
| that much volume, so tanks are small. Those things aren't
| selling. What's selling are attachments that hook onto the back
| of a tractor far too big for the job. But if you need this kind
| of thing, you probably have a hulking huge tractor anyway. And
| the big ones have air conditioning.
| bluGill wrote:
| > lightweight ag robots
|
| Lightweight isn't an advantage. Big is an advantage. Soil
| compaction is sub-linear with weight, but linear with tire
| width. As such the more you can do from the one set of tire
| tracks the better. Bonus if you can use the exact same tire
| tracks as everything else that crossed the field, since those
| tracks are already damaged and you can't really do much more.
| This every place the tire touched the ground is a big negative
| of tracks - sure you get less compaction in the track, but when
| you turn at the end of the field you touch a lot more ground
| and so overall are worse.
|
| See a soil expert for more. There are lots of different soil
| types and many different considerations. I gave some generally
| rules that are typically true, but there are often other
| considerations and compromises. There is no one size fits all.
| niemandhier wrote:
| For EU techno farmers: As much of a bureaucratic monster the EU
| is, using drones to spray stuff here is possible. As per answer
| of the commission, spraying is consider aerial application and
| thus per se allowed in cases where aerial application would be
| allowed.
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00092...
|
| There is no blanket permit, one has to apply using pre defined
| risk assessments ( PDRAs ) and provide suitable operational
| procedures.
|
| You can hire some consultants to do the paperwork for about 2kEUR
|
| https://eudroneport.com/flight-authorisations/pdras/.
|
| Currently the horizons projects ICAERUS2, SPADE3, and CHAMELEON4
| are investigating agricultural drones, legislation will probably
| be amended once they conclude.
| rmason wrote:
| I spoke with some aerial applicators a few years back that I used
| to work with when I was in the fertilizer business. Asked them if
| they were worried about drones possibly taking part of their
| business and they just laughed. They told me the payload on the
| drones would never make them serious competition.
|
| Then a couple of years later they admitted they'd lost some of
| their business to drones but they weren't worried it would ever
| be all that much. I told them that there was one way to make sure
| it never would hurt them and that was to get into drone spraying
| themselves.
|
| A large majority of farmers will want someone else to do it for
| them. I said you know the customer, you know their fields and are
| well versed with the chemicals. They said I don't know, but you
| could see they were thinking hard. These guys were second
| generation aerial applicators and if their kids wanted to enter
| the business they sure needed to consider it. One of them has a
| son in college who is already a pilot.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > They told me the payload on the drones would never make them
| serious competition.
|
| Why can't drones be as big as a crop duster airplane and run on
| gas instead of batteries?
| rmason wrote:
| They could except for regulations. It is the same as
| driverless cars only much more disastrous potentially. You
| wouldn't want them crashing into other planes or flying into
| buildings.
|
| I saw a drone demonstrated by a startup in 2005-2006 that
| could leave the airport in the morning and do aerial infrared
| photography all day and return at dusk. The FAA would never
| give them permission to fly and the company failed. Saw
| another company around 2015 show me the exact same thing
| except they had a chip that let them avoid aircraft and
| geofenced them from entering space around all airports. The
| FAA let them do a preliminary test which they passed but
| never let them have permanent permission so they ran out of
| capital and failed.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation! Then I don't see much future
| for drone dusting. They need to be big to bring a lot of
| payload.
| tristanb wrote:
| I fly ultralights / gliders. We don't have a way to deal
| with these yet and a system like that could be lethal to
| us. There is a reason they didn't get permission.
| kkfx wrote:
| It would be more interesting how to use smaller machines directly
| powered by agrivoltaic, to finally start reducing diesel in
| agriculture. Since nothing is so quick in that field I imaging
| there is nothing wrong if a certain activity normally done in one
| day took 4-5 days following Sun. A bit of spread p.v. for mere
| self consumption does not means loosing usable space for
| agriculture and that would be a perfect match.
| bluGill wrote:
| 4-5 days is the difference between a small weed that a little
| chemical will take care of to a large weed that can resist some
| chemical.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well, spray herbicides does not demand much power so it could
| be quick, moving soil demand much power, cutting grass and
| alike demand much power, irrigation demand a certain amount
| of power.
|
| I suppose that a slowly moving large machine could be powered
| by p.v. for spraying chemicals and for certain kind of
| irrigation, deep water pumping probably eat more power but
| still enough for a 40kWp p.v. spread around a field, for the
| field. Moving soil will demand few days instead of one, but
| for that I see not much issues, similarly harvesting. Am I
| wrong?
| dctoedt wrote:
| FTA: ""I've become a big proponent of not trying to outsmart the
| customers," he says. "They tell us what their pain points are and
| what they want to see in the product. Don't overengineer it.
| Always check with the end users that what you're building is
| going to be useful.""
| worik wrote:
| I work in the agtech industry, software for record keeping of
| spray paths
|
| I wondered out loud why the industry spends millions on making us
| valuable vulnerable monkeys fly the helicopters when drones would
| be an order of magnitude cheaper
|
| Turns out the companies that do the work were all started and
| operated by pilots
|
| Progress happens one funeral (retirement) at a time
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