
AI and Robotics in Agriculture in Japan [video] - da02
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/vod/rising/20170608/
======
agumonkey
I often laugh about that soon miniaturization of electronics and soon
mechanics too, we'll be so proud of our new little swarms of silicon insects.
Then someone will have the genius idea to make them env. friendly, even
biodegradable, and feed on local nutrient; and to provide self sustained
optimizations, make them exchange heuristic atom that we'd call genes.
Greetings, humans, welcome to nature. You just learned to speak to it.

ps: I heard there were tiny leaf cutting quadcopters on the market in Europe.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I used to dislike nature because technology seemed cooler. Metal beats flesh,
right?

But at some point I realised this: nature _is_ technology. It's a super-
advanced nanotech that is not of our design, and which we can't control...
_yet_.

Our current solutions may seem better, but that's only because they're crude
attempts at directly optimizing for narrow set of goals. Planes may be faster
than birds, but they don't self-heal, self-fuel, and don't do centimetre-
precision maneuvering in a complex environment.

Nowadays I believe that our technology has a lot to learn and steal from
nature - e.g. materials, energy-efficiency, self-replication. Better metal
will look more and more like flesh.

~~~
agumonkey
Basically we agree. I see "tech" as anthropological hubris mostly. We overcome
our own limited understanding through the ages and each time we felt great.
Dismissing the beauty of everything around us. When you think about how even a
fly is amazing, or an insect, so minuscule, so thin.

At the end we'll only get to understand our own world and own bias. Then we
may reconsider the meaning of life and our cultures.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I thought we agree until this comment :). I don't see tech as hubris _at all_.
I see it as what makes humans interesting.

For me, since the dawn of human age, we've been mostly taking baby steps, and
only in the last two or three decades we've entered puberty. There's still a
lot for us to learn, and nature is a constant reminder of that.\

For me, the fly is not amazing just because it's a fly - it's amazing because
it shows how many things we have not learned... yet. It's a constant reminder
that we're nowhere near the peak of what's possible, and a constant
encouragement to try and scale that peak.

~~~
hosh
I'm speaking as someone who makes a living with technology, and I have a
vested, material interest in keeping this status quo. I make a differentiation
between knowledge and wisdom.

We can learn a lot from nature -- in the sense that we can learn a lot of
knowledge. And you are right, we are nowhere near the peak. Maybe I am reading
into your words too much, but it feels like there is a lot of enthusiasm you
have for technology. That resonates with me.

However, I agree with the other guy -- it is hubris. How I get there has to do
with wisdom not being normative. We might be able to gain a lot of knowledge,
but we have not been gaining much wisdom.

There are other frames I can get into -- for example, Eisler's "Chalce and
Blade", Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred", Mazis's "Trickster, Magician,
and Grieving Man". I think we very much have an arrogance which comes with
technology, in our attitudes around it and what we want to do with it, and the
many consequences around how we use and abuse technology.

For me, a fly is not just amazing because it shows how much knowledge we have
yet to learn about a fly. To use the language of mystics: there is wisdom in
_being_ the fly, one that is non-obvious.

~~~
agumonkey
I could add so system theory on how insect perceive the world in great detail
yet a bit different than us (bertalanffy did research on the "render period"
of insects). IT's not really "mystique", more a holistic view on things. It's
an insect, it's a pile or bio mechanic organic goo, it's quite intelligent,
it's beautiful to watch, it's similar to us, it's part of the whole ecosystem.

But the thing is, the more I know about the universe, the less I want to
"know". Or at least the less I want to turn into application, business and all
that; which in this is case is often hubris, ignorance (selling things hidden
behind marketing talk and shiney package), for the purpose of being the best,
owning a market, "advancing" the world (when most people need more basic
things but alas).

~~~
hosh
You could, but that would not be what I meant by shifting consciousness. I
mean modifying or altering consciousness such that one experiences the world
from that view point, and in doing so, also understand how that experiencing
relates to the world.

The latter part assumes a "consciousness as first principle" rather than as an
emergent property of matter -- that is, why would consciousness configure
itself and experience in this particular way ?

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yanivleven
Japan is by far the world leader in one of the most important tech revolutions
in the coming decade, the robotics revolution.

~~~
hwillis
That's not true. Agricultural robotics and automation are certainly more
advanced in America and have improving for a long time. Drones with spectral
cameras to examine and map plant health and irrigation levels, and to spot-
spray pesticides, automated gps tractors and tools, collaborative augmented
reality- nothing new in the US or Europe. It's said a lot, but Japanese
robotics is somewhat myopic. IMO mostly it's due to the corporate structures
in Japan: huge companies like Honda can pour tons of funding into ASIMO for 4
decades, but their goals are too narrow to make up for broad, investigative
research. Plus, culture in Japan is a tangible _force_ , and the awareness of
societal problems is so high it actually impedes pure research. They are so
focused on their aging population and the automation of labor that the large
majority of research is geared towards those problems in one way or another.
The US has the same problem- we focus on military use over everything else,
but we do it just a little less than Japan.

You typically hear this sentiment (Japan is the best at robotics) wrt humanoid
robotics, especially ASIMO[1]. ASIMO is basically just a really smooth suite
of soft skills. Facial recognition, voice, HRI, and consumer-friendly
hardware. The hard skills underneath are extremely highly optimized but
fundamentally weak and outdated by over 20 years. ASIMO runs on the same
hardware and algorithms from the 90s except for batteries, computer speed and
sensor accuracy. In the US we have been extremely inventive with hardware
design- eg all-plastic mass-manufacture BAXTER, or ATLAS, which is largely
hydraulic. The newest generations of ATLAS have hydraulic actuators integrated
into the frame.

ASIMO and most japanese robots use a variation on ZMP walking methods, which
has the characteristic high-knee, ankle-heavy look. It's extremely inefficient
and unstable. Russian robots use this too. Other robots in the US, Europe and
even in China use much more efficient, flexible methods separated by a couple
generations of new algorithms. Take Cassie[2] from OSU's dynamic robotics lab.
Pretty clearly far ahead of anything in Japan in stability, speed, power[3]
and efficiency, built by grad students from scratch. Compact series elastic
actuators with HZD algorithms.

Japanese robots are meant to look perfect. Russian robots are meant to look
terrifying. American robots are meant to explore new algorithms or
technologies. European robots are mostly meant to build cars.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEJeIUTValE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEJeIUTValE)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is4JZqhAy-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is4JZqhAy-M)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWVci9qS7Ds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWVci9qS7Ds)

~~~
Animats
Then there's the Google debacle. Google bought Boston Dynamics, Schaft, and
some other robotic startups in 2013, and they were seldom heard from again.
The companies that had customers, such as Bot and Dolly, lost them. For a
while, the industry assumed Google had the Next Big Thing in the works, but
after a few years, it came out that Google's robotics effort had collapsed.
That was a real disappointment.

Boston Dynamics's hydraulic technology is just too heavy and bulky. Big Dog
was impressive, but it took $120 million to get it working as the Legged Squad
Support System. Then the USMC rejected it as not useful in combat. Atlas
version 1 was basically a Big Dog mod. Version 2 is better, but still weighs
150Kg.

What you want in an actuator is a spring with adjustable spring constant,
neutral point, and damping factor. Muscles are like that. You can do that
pneumatically, and that's been done at CWRU, but a compressed air supply is
needed. Series elastic actuators are a research tool for faking muscle-like
motion. They're a good way to let a motor with a high gear ratio handle a
shock load, but they're inefficient; there's no energy recovery. Humans
recover over half the energy in running as elastic storage in muscles.
(Cheetahs, around 90%) Ideally, you'd like a direct-drive electric motor,
which some SCARA robots have used. They're large-diameter devices, though.
Schaft used liquid-cooled electric motors and didn't gear them down too much,
which worked well. Their humanoid was a great piece of engineering. Electric
linear actuators (real linear, not screw drives) once seemed promising but
didn't work out well.

(I used to work on control algorithms for legged robots. A key insight there
is that slip control dominates; priorities are traction control, then balance,
then goal. Once you get off a flat surface, slip control becomes more
important.)

~~~
modeless
Agreed about the disappointment in Google robotics. So in your opinion what
will be the best available technology for robot actuators in 5-10 years?

I've recently become much more interested in robotics and I'm trying to figure
out the best way to approach the field. I don't have much hardware experience
so at the moment I'm thinking about training neural nets for robot control in
simulation. I'm also looking for meetup groups or other ways to connect with
like-minded people (in the SV area). Any advice for a dev/ML person looking to
get into robotics?

~~~
hwillis
If you can manage to be impressive with computer vision, that'll go a long
way. The problems in that space are intense but some are solvable with NN.
Recognition and things.

Most of the movement problems don't work that well with NN, afaik. I think
they've been applied to avoiding singularities but if you wanted to use a NN
to optimize movement, you'd have to simulate all the sets of movement first to
train it. Hard ask, and people in robotics tend to be interested in abilities
rather than optimization although of course they come hand in hand.

If you have the math background to understand the algorithms you can learn the
cutting edge papers and implement those, then work on them. It isn't exactly
simple, though.

------
dumbfounder
Microsoft is working on this too: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/project/farmbeats-i...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/research/project/farmbeats-iot-agriculture/) Saw it demonstrated at a tech
event last night in DC.

------
antoniuschan99
I'm interested in using Technology in Agriculture. Anyone have any interesting
links?

This is what I'm working on:
[http://www.kokonaut.com](http://www.kokonaut.com)

~~~
chicob
That looks cool. What part of that project are you responsible for?

~~~
antoniuschan99
It's currently the Industrial Designer and I.

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majewsky
Can someone summarize the submission? It just says "Video not available" for
me.

~~~
pakitan
It's basically a PR piece for a Japanese company. Shows a spraying drone, a
drone on wheels that can show you a video of how well your asparagus is
growing, and a drone collecting images of onion fields, that can be analyzed
by AI for detection of a specific type of fungus, with questionable accuracy.
I didn't see anything that would justify the 30 minutes wasted watching the
video.

~~~
hammeiam
Agreed. All of the examples shown were basically, "and then we put a camera on
this drone, isn't that cool?" I was hoping for technology at the caliber of
those LED greenhouses, or at least as good as that tensorflow cucumber sorter.

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stereo
That link is borken.

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jawbone3
I think robots are cool, but it is a bit depressing that a big driver for
their development is that the japanese want to keep immigrants out... makes me
a bit hesitant to wish them luck with it.

~~~
puranjay
Contrary to perception, open immigration is unfair to the weakest and poorest
in a society.

I live in India. My country has 300M people living in acute poverty - less
than $1/day.

These are the people who would likely benefit most from immigrating to a
developed country with better healthcare and opportunities.

Yet:

1\. These people would be liabilities in a developed nation since they have no
transferable skills apart from manual labor. Most can't even read or write.

2\. In 99% of cases, these people wouldn't even know anything about
immigration, refugee status, etc.

Open immigration essentially helps people who already have the knowledge and
means to immigrate. These are _not_ the poorest and most in-need.

The Indian immigrants moving to America or Europe can have perfectly okay
lives in India. I don't begrudge them for moving, but for western people to
assume a philanthropic stance for taking them in is wrong. You aren't helping
the poorest; you're helping the "doing okay" segment of the population.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Being able to do manual labour is still enough of a desirable skill on its
own, and yes, hordes of the poor from the Indian subcontinent emigrate (albeit
on a temporary contractual basis). The outflow of dirt-poor Indian farming
villages to Gulf construction projects has been a phenomenon for decades now.

~~~
puranjay
The people emigrating aren't the poorest of the poor. The gulf workers you
talk about are mostly from India's most developed state (Kerala), are educated
(or at least, literate), and have access to decent healthcare.

The people I'm talking about are from states where 40% of the population lives
below poverty line and the literacy rate is still at 60%.

