
Autonomous Robots Plant, Tend, and Harvest Entire Crop of Barley - bansheehash
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/autonomous-robots-plant-tend-and-harvest-entire-crop-of-barley
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thomas_howland
The amount of labor involved in grain crops like barley per dollar of output
is minimal already - the guy running the tractor/combine/etc is mostly making
sure nothing breaks and keeping an eye on things (which is important when
you're operating $N00,000 worth of heavy equipment on open ground). You do
need guys, however, for when things do go wrong, and for all the other farm
tasks (equipment maintenance, fencing, maintaining irrigation, and so on).

~~~
joncp
Imagine, though, a time when the automation reaches a stage where all weeding
and most insect killing can be done mechanically with a robot instead of
chemically with pesticides. That will be a huge boon for the environment and
for farmers' bottom lines.

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dejv
Insects are never gonna be killed mechanically, those are too small and too
many in count. Modern trend is to use biological controll: you "plant"
organism that eat them or eat their eggs.

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dejv
Just to expand on my comment, biological control is quite varied, but the main
theme is selectivity: you don't want to destroy all the insects or
butterflies, just those who do harm to your produce.

So you basically have couple of forms, either some microbes, viruses or some
form of insects that eat on just one type of insect or of insect class.
Another main form is pheromone confusion thingies: you put them in your
orchard/vineyard/market garden and it make hard for males of your target pest
to find female and procreate.

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akgerber
While in rural Japan, I noticed a lot of tiny combine rice harvesters in tiny
rice paddies, as opposed to mega-scale American agriculture:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#/media/File:Rice-
combine-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#/media/File:Rice-combine-
harvester,_Katori-city,_Japan.jpg)

Perhaps these would be a model for smaller autonomous combines.

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zeristor
There were a series of talks at the Royal Society about Robot Farming a few
months back.

This video, by the head of Harper Adams College, goes into a lot more detail:

[https://youtu.be/OU8nwf2UI8g](https://youtu.be/OU8nwf2UI8g)

Agricultural machinery size is now limited by train tunnel size for delivery.

Larger farm vehicles, although more productive per person are heavier and
cause soil compaction, which then requires further treatments to fix. Mention
was made of light robot tractors able to work wet fields earlier before they
are dry enough for a heavy human tractor so extending they growing season.
They show an example of a light weight tractor that can drive up and down on a
wet field without turning it into mud.

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randomdata
_> There’s still dirt, early mornings, dirt, more dirt_

I have always wondered who are these farmers in the dirt in the early morning?
Where I farm the environment is rarely suitable for 'being in the dirt' in the
morning. Typically the field work starts in the mid-afternoon after the sun
has had a chance to dry up the morning's dew or previous days rain. There are
definitely some late nights though.

~~~
Gustomaximus
Im on a small hobby farm outside Brisbane. Mid afternoon you want to be inside
to get out of the heat. Mornings are prime time to get things done. Or later
afteenoon.

~~~
randomdata
_> Mid afternoon you want to be inside to get out of the heat._

That's what air conditioning is for!

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DesiLurker
what I am interested in is robots that can reforest unused land. Imagine the
possibilities with having armies of robots re-establishing green cover in
Amazon delta. kinda like this but with
robots:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_GreenHands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_GreenHands)

good thing is that would be not require nearly as much 'babysitting' as
growing crops just ability to charter uneven terrain.

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ph0rque
Reforestration with drones:
[https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/technologies](https://www.biocarbonengineering.com/technologies)

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samstave
It said that the capital to do this was $200,000 -- what was the inventory of
robots required to accomplish this.

What will it take to have a small fleet of robots to manage small farms - but
many small farms.

What if a community of gardens and farms were dispersed around a
neighborhood/small town - and the town shared the use of the autonomous robots
wherever possible.

Which robots are common to all farms and which robots are specific to a given
crop?

Also, the downplay the robot-management tasks (refueling, recharging,
interceding in really bad weather to tell the robots "that'll do robot, no
farming today" sort of stuff)

An open library of farm robots, the tasks they can do, their cost options, how
much crop area /number of farms/acres they can manage, if they can multi-task
between activities specific to tomatoes in one farm and corn in another etc...

That would be interesting data.

Then couple that with the open source civilization plans - and update those to
make those items more intelligent for efficiencies in their designed tasks.

In 100 years, if we can get an atmosphere on mars, we just send a fully
automated pre-colonizing farm fleet to prep our invasion.

~~~
ekianjo
It will take way longer than 100 years to gey an atmosphere ready to grow
earth crops on Mars, if at all possible.

~~~
samstave
I know that, I was putting a random number.

Regardless, we could still have a fleet of robots go build structures there,
then another that will grow things in the structures...

We talk about sending men to mars, but I think it's short-sighted to not first
figure out how to send and deploy resources and robots to pre-build
infrastructure for said humans - and we should be practicing on the moon.

Or why is it that nobody seems to be talking about this? And specifically
talking about practicing in the moon?

Spacex is really focused on a rocket that can get to mars, how much more
quickly can it get to the moon?

~~~
ekianjo
> We talk about sending men to mars, but I think it's short-sighted to not
> first figure out how to send and deploy resources and robots to pre-build
> infrastructure for said humans - and we should be practicing on the moon.

As far as I know SpaceX is focusing on sending "stuff" to Mars, not just
humans. Humans are better than robots in many ways though, as in they can do a
lot of more versatile stuff. We can build rovers to explore and take pictures,
but building a robot that can mimic the palette of actions of a typical human
is far beyond our reach at the moment.

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Reason077
What I really need is an autonomous slug-killing robot on my allotment.
Everything else I can handle. I've tried most existing controls, short of
toxic Metaldehyde pellets, with little effect on the little buggers.

I estimate they destroyed over 50% of my (potential) crop this year, which
makes you wonder how much toxic stuff goes on all those perfect field-grown
cabbages etc you see in supermarkets...

~~~
awjr
Chickens are the answer my friend ;)

Seriously they are brilliant and the eggs are just this great bonus. The more
insects they eat the tastier the eggs! You do need to visit them at least once
per day, however auto-feeders and automatic coop openers do mean you are only
going to collect eggs and maybe refill water. They also have amazing
characters.

If you have a good relationship with other allotment holders then they can
also collect eggs and look after them for you if you go on holiday.

If you do consider getting some, get point of lay chickens as they will give
you a lot more eggs in the long run. Rescue chickens are a friendlier than
some of the pure breeds but you do not get the variety of egg colours.

You do not need a cockerel but do expect hens to crow after laying. They love
shouting about it.

~~~
Reason077
Unfortunately animals are not permitted on my allotment (except bees). Also
the visiting-every-day requirement might be more of a commitment than I can
muster.

But I'm curious, how would the chickens get to the slugs? Don't they have to
be kept in a fenced off enclosure, away from the plants - otherwise they would
damage young seedlings etc?

We do have a population of toads which I think eat the slugs, but they just
don't eat enough of them! And the local cats, in turn, seem to be quite
interested in eating the toads...

~~~
awjr
I used to keep young seedlings covered, but anything big they ignored but
happily hunted all day. On an allotment I would suspect you would need to pen
your allotment using a flexible electric fence IF people objected to chickens
invading their allotment.

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jefflombardjr
Do this for small scale non-monoculture farming and I will be impressed. This
is just a marginal productivity gain for factory farming.

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losteric
You're right... it's just like how early commercial computers were
productivity gains for large corporations.

New tech is expensive and not very good - only big businesses see positive
ROI. As some technology matures, it becomes a commodity for everyone.

Small farms could go do this right now. It just wouldn't make financial sense.

~~~
jefflombardjr
Yeah I mean if you think improving ethanol and malt production is cool.

As far as actual food I'm more impressed by small scale open source farm bot
projects and some of the innovative stuff permaculturists are doing without
tech.

Factory farmers = Microsoft/Windows

Small scale farmers = Open Source/Linux

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Tade0
> Moonshots like this are understandably expensive, though, and since a huge
> chunk of that money went to capital costs (like buying a tractor and a
> harvester), the next crop will be vastly cheaper.

They would get a more accurate number if they calculated how much these
machines depreciated over that period instead of just throwing in their total
cost.

~~~
justonepost
Not really, they should theoretically handle a lot more than a hectare with
these things.

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teekert
And over time you don't need machines that accommodate humans anymore making
them even cheaper to produce. This is the future.

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camillomiller
I have an acquaintance who works for a huge manufacturer of agricultural
machinery. His stories about adventurous technicians who have to parachute
into remote Australian farm lands to repair a stuck self-driving combine are
always nice to hear.

~~~
mads
That sounds like an awesome job.

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TaylorAlexander
If anyone is in to this I write speculative fiction about this kind of thing:

[http://tlalexander.com/sanctuary/](http://tlalexander.com/sanctuary/)

(I also build robots) :)

~~~
tw1010
Any tips for people who want to start writing speculative fiction (or just
short stories), other than to just practice a lot?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I think my best tip is both to read (for amusement, education, and
inspiration) and to write (as in - just do it, and if you're stuck silence
your inner critic and just DO IT).

I'm just some engineer. But I'm a really imaginative and passionate person and
I have a lot of ideas I care about. And so I write about those. I was inspired
by reading The Martian, which was an amazing book written by a Software
Engineer. It was after reading The Martian that I began writing.

Have you tried writing? What has been your blocker?

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Taniwha
Somewhere out the back is another bunch of fields where they test the robots,
they're probably full of crops in various states of destruction

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meri_dian
Automate the supply chains. Start with what is essential then move on from
there.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Disagree. Automate the production, which democratizes the supply.

Minimal supply chains are necessary if you can produce crops autonomously at
the point of consumption (think rooftop solar). It would be wildly inefficient
to grow in each person's backyard, but not so to grow in the outer rings of
urban areas.

Automated production is essential. Supply chains for abundant, distributed
resources are superfluous.

~~~
abakker
I think you might be correct in some domains, but farming isn't one. You
simply can't grow all crops in all places, nor is that allocation of land a
good use. Barley grows well in flat fields. Not so well in the wooded hills
outside Atlanta. Hops won't grow at all where it doesn't freeze in the winter,
and basil needs lots of sun and water. We've mostly optimized where we grow
crops for land use and yield already, so, it is indeed a supply chain problem
to move them to where they need to go.

Also, I'm not sure how automation of labor democratizes supply. supply isn't
constrained by labor. It is constrained by yield. Automation won't solve that
as much as chemical engineering or more land would.

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toomuchtodo
> I'm not sure how automation of labor democratizes supply.

It puts the control back in the hands of consumers of the product, instead of
producers (which is more often than not, multinationals or large corporations
who are motivated to extract as much profit as possible from their business
transactions).

You do not have time or resources to farm your own plot of land (generally
speaking, hand waving away the homesteaders here). Your ag co-op [1] does.
This is to farming as AWS was to infrastructure (if I may be permitted to
torture an analogy).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_cooperative)

~~~
wil421
Who do you really think will own the robots? It will be the multinational
corporations again. Food is decently cheap already considering I have to eat
multiple times a day. People will just spend their money on some place else.
Like you said another corporation will extract profit from other transactions.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Who do you really think will own the robots?

Well, society gets a say. Witness how both Canada and India have invalidated
pharma patents, and how the US DoD is permitted to nullify patents when it
suits them for strategic purposes [1].

Also, the US government can infringe on a patent with limited resource of the
patent holder.

"Can the U.S. Government Infringe a U.S. Patent? (The U.S. Government Says
it’s Impossible)"

"Although a patentee can sue the U.S. government for unlicensed use of its
invention, Congress requires that those cases be filed in the Court of Federal
Claims (CFC) rather than in district court. No jury trial is available, and
the only remedy is a reasonable royalty." [2]

I think its a bit defeatist to throw your arms up in the air and say "there is
no hope, big companies will always win", but I'm an optimist.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2013/04/gov-secrecy-orders-on-
patents/](https://www.wired.com/2013/04/gov-secrecy-orders-on-patents/)

[2] [https://patentlyo.com/patent/2015/09/government-infringe-
imp...](https://patentlyo.com/patent/2015/09/government-infringe-
impossible.html)

~~~
wil421
Just because something becomes cheaper doesn't mean someone isn't profiting.
Unless the government owns the production and historically that doesn't work
out so well. We live in a capitalist society. For thousands of years there has
been a chief, king, family, and now corporate entity profiting off another
group. Humans are not even close in our lifetimes.

I won't even source anything I can look around. Applaud your optimism.

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ge96
Man that is a cool site, all the robotic articles thanks for sharing

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Ballantara
s/barley/weed/gi

~~~
brootstrap
my man!

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bobsgame
I love this so much. This is the coolest thing in the world.

