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Hi-Tech Weed-Killer
Makarand writes "Instead of making improvements to automatic mechanical weeders, Engineers at UC Davis have been
busy
developing the next generation robotic weeder which will use computerized images of
crop rows to identify weeds and zap them. The system can identify weeds from the regular crop by
assessing shape, color, size and other variables from the captured images of the crop row.
A robotic cultivator will then blast weeds with a weedkiller using syringes mounted on
a tractor. A GPS allows the system to calculate weed type densities within the field and the amounts of chemicals dispensed in the area."
...a robot that mows the lawn?
I'll bet the DEA is super happy about this.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Guess that eliminates my garden...
how soon till someone hacks a zapper bot and subs a picture of say oh I don't KNOW a COW or Farmer Joe :)
Where's Tom Selleck these days ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
If it can recognize the weed, how much harder would it be to design an arm to *pull* it!?! (or roll it and smoke it :)
Weed killer???
;)
how will i get my buzz???
the ramifications of using this product are way too much for this soul to bear.
time to "get rid" of my weed before someone else does
ZERO
You know virtually all systems have bugs in them.
I wonder how long until the weeds find the exploits.
Now I've seen Everything
I remember working for a company which was trying to sell computer hardware to an organisation developing a system like this.
The system had a plant recognition benchmark we had to run. It was calibrated in 'cabbages per second'.
to protect Sarah Conner's garden from her enemies...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Around here (midwestern USA), the farmers are reluctant to try even the most basic of new things (no-till farming, organics, etc). I'm having a hard time imagining any of the farmers that I know shelling out a couple of grand on a robot with a camera, to run up & down the fields.
Then again, if they can show how the cost is offset by gains in yields, then it just might get some use. Another concern is battery life - just how far is this thing going to go on a charge? 1 mile? That'll cover 4 rows...then what?
The weed-killing machine still has a few bugs. For example, overlapping weeds and crops can confound the computerized instructions that run the squirt guns.
Nothing still beats the human eye and mind for such tasks, since there are so many variables involved in the location of weeds versus crops.
If such equipment can be further refined, perhaps with a robotic arm to look behind and possibly separate weeds from crops, sometthing close to human accuracy can be obtained.
At least now, the danger to humans with working with pesticides can be reduced.
The Pigloo
The problem is that there will be a class of weed that this thing won't be able to "see"... and that weed will thrive.
THEN you'll have to hire a worker to go pluck them out. Or get a software upgrade. Or both.
Anything which can reduce the reliance on pesticides is a GOOD thing. Now we just need to do something similar for fertizilers, if a farmer could use a lower base level of fertiziler and have the machine add additional amounts only to those areas that most need it then the overall usage would probably go way down and the impact on the environment would be reduced.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
These guys must have read Marvin Minsky's fiction account of robots and AI. This (crop care/maintenance) was one of the first commercial applications of the robotic AI in the book after the prototype was snatched. I think he used bugs instead of weeds, though. Maybe both. Been a while since I read it.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I thought it said "High Tech Killer Weed" at first. I got excited. Finally, a /. topic that's REALLY interesting. I'm so sad. Disappointed, not stoned, and sad.
This gives factory farming a new name!
Why do we get weeds? As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. So, any tilled space between plantings and rows is enrgy going to waste. Weeds sprout up in this empty space to capture that energy.
So if you want to control weeds in a manner that doesn't cost (hundreds) of thousands, pollute rivers, stream and groundwater, just keep it simple stupid:
Plant cover crops in-between and among your primary crop. It could be a harvestable plant, such as pole beans on corn or basil with tomatoes, though this makes harvesting a job for people and not machines. Or plant a companion crop which adds nutrients to the soil. Legumes add nitrates, buckwheat grass makes great compost, just till it under with your next planting. Even better plant flowers and other hebs that attract colonies of beneficial insects that will help control insect populations in your primary crop.
We got by for a long time without these chemicals. Organic farmers in the US and Bio-dynamic farmers in Europe and harvesting yields that dwarf factory farms, with better flavor and nutrients than conventional produce, and no toxic chemicals.
This idea was implemented ages ago, using a device called a "gardener".
No story here.
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Seems to me that a technology like this should be designed to be attractive to organic growers, since they're far more likely to be interested in a robotic weed killer. But it better have a fuel cell or enviromentally friendly battery, too.
And why kill weeds in place when you can just yank 'em and dump the whole thing in the compost pile? I was expecting a big bot with a couple of graspers on either end and a huge solar energy collecting mast on top.
But really, I just disagree with the premise that agriculture needs to be fully mechanized and automated to help the economy, or whatever tbe argument supporting things like this might actually be.
What a waste of technology! Think about it: They're going to go to the effort of doing a brute-force identification of weeds (i.e. looking at every plant in every row, instead of using a broadly-targeted agent). But then they fall back on an old-school method of killing the weed -- by poisoning. Yeah, targeted poisoning, but it's a refinement of an undesirable technology.
:)
Now, it seems to me that if you're going to the effort of imaging the leaves of virtually every stalk coming out of the ground, you ought to take the opportunity to do something very selective and low-impact to the surrounding plants. Like pull the damn thing out, roots and all. No expense of chemical agents, no breeding of resistant weed species, and it produces a product that people are willing to pay a premium for. I'm pretty sure that having weeds pulled robotically would not impact the qualification of a product as "organic."
Just my $0.02US, but I'd sooner feed my kids methodically/robotically well-managed organic food than feed them foodstuffs protected by well-targeted herbicides and pesticides. Why play that lottery if you have the technological means to avoid it?
I think not...(*poof*)
Good idea, but what you are missing is the fact that the ground only holds so much in amount of nutients, water, etc, and even if some plants give back some nutrients to the soil while growing, the secondary plants will just be competition to the primary crop, resulting in stunted yields. Also, with the height that corn grows, it would be virtually impossible to grow anything in between the rows, since the corn would block all the sunlight to the shorter plants. The secondary crop would grow well until the corn grew taller than it, but in the end this hurts the very important early growth of the corn. This would also result in leaching of the soil, since there would be so much growing in such a small place, with neither growing to its full capability.
Or...farmers can just continue rotating crops every year like they do and adding only as much fertilizer as needed, keeping their yields as high as possible.