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Satellite Driven Farming Equipment
ravenousbugblatter writes "An article at CNN discusses how Australian scientists are using GPS to automatically drive tractors and other farming equipment on predetermined tracks. The technology is encouraged because it can prevent water loss associated with the repeated compaction of soil from heavy farming equipment."
I, for one, welcome our new tractor overlords.
Mike
It's the beginning of the Redneck Skynet!
"Do not hold strong opinions about things you do not understand."
They can't control the genetically modified crops with GPS. Then you wouldn't have to worried about your crops becoming infected with someone's IP.
This seems very cool and everything but I wonder how "automatic" these are and do they have any collision detection. I can't help but picture the tractor going along, hitting a kangeroo and then all hell break loose. Never underestimate the unexpected
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Repeated compaction and water loss might be a problem, but just wait until one of these badboys gets out of hand and ends up mowing down some precious kangaroo farm. Then we'll see who gives a damn about how compact their soil is.
Just you wait.
Posting as directed.
Now they'll have to figure out how to prevent property loss associated with the repeated compaction of buildings from heavy misguided farming equipment...
This is a very bad idea. I hear GPS gives coords. backwards in the land down under. =P
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Couldn't the same thing be achived by simply not driving in the ruts?
-- I stole this sig off some old git
during the war, my acura GPS would be off by a 1/5th of a mile or so... watch out for tractors gone wild in your backyard.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
...Possibly this can explain those crop circles coming in from outer space...
This innovation should advance the artistry of crop circles immesurably. No longer must we risk capture and incarceration in persuit of out artistic dreams. Now our wildest imaginings can be realized all from the comfort of our satelite relay stations.
I offer a $100K reward to the first hack who can build me am etch-a-sketch driven combine.
This could also be a great help to reduce fatigue related accidents on farms. I have friends that are farmers and during harvest times they routinely work 18+ hours driving harvesting machinery. Often a worker falls asleep at the wheel and has caused thousands of dollars in damage, not to mention the potential for human injuries or death. These tractors could keep these routine tasks safer and maybe in the long run cheaper too.
GPS has been used in farming for a decade, and is fantastic for saving $$$ on fertilizers (liquid) and other farming tasks.
I was looking at this, and despite the funny jokes about a redneck skynet, and all hail the rise of the john deer overlords, I do have a couple serious questions.
In kansas a lot of the farmed land in the north western parts of kansas is non-uniform. People tend to have this idea of kansas as being a flat area, but the land is actually quite hilly in the western parts.
What happens if a tractor slips or loses traction? Or do the tractors simply not operate when it is muddy? How much error detection and fixiing do these tractors have. What happens if it finds itself on a part of a field it shouldnt be on, IE its transmitter goes out for a short period of time due to electrical disturbance (say freak lightning or something else).
Does the tractor drive across tilled land to get back to the spot (possibly destroying crops) or does it know to re-orient itself, drive along the right path, and then proceed about its task.
What happens if there is a hardware failure, is it possible to set a new tractor right where the last one set off, or does it need to go through the entire process again?
these things werent answered very well in the article, but are very obvious questions i think that should pop up to someone who read the article.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
My former boss worked on something like this years ago, although if I recall correctly, it was based on dead reckoning and computer vision, not GPS.
Hmm, what happens when Gulf War III starts, and the US turns SA back on? (Selective Availability, undetectable errors added to readings). Could be interesting...
As great is this might be to farmers in australia, my question is how long will it take to automate my lawn care?
It's great fun to spend half a day getting drunk to ignore extream heat while mowing your lawn, but i'll bet people would buy lawnmowers that would do it for you.
This might also eliminate that neighbor that has the fortitude to wake up at 7:00 am on saturday to cut his lawn.
----
Squirrel
I wonder how soon we'll see an automated lawnmower for ordinary yards and lawns. I've seen the vacuum cleaner that senses obstacles, allowing it to vacuum a room unattended. Seems like mowing a lawn wouldn't be too much different. Of course, you'd have to define boundaries, because, unlike an indoor room, there might not be solid walls at the edge of the lawn.
I used to work in a farm and I can say that adding altitude can give you a whole new perspective about what's going on in your fields. Over the years, there have been a number of attempts at using images gathered from airplanes and satellites to enhance scouting
These images provided some interesting views, but were never timely enough to be useful for making management decisions. Plus, the equipment was not readily available to make a pass when you needed it made.
The only option growers had for aerial scouting that provided immediate information was to learn to fly themselves. For most, the cost of flying lessons and airplanes meant that wasn't a very practical option.
Now new technology is opening the door for more immediate, more useful aerial information about your crops. And if you just want to fly over your fields to see how they look from above, that's becoming easier and more affordable, too.
After years of promise that satellites would revolutionize crop scouting, recent developments are turning promise into reality.
Aerial photos can be especially useful for mapping fields in remote areas. A group of ranchers and groups interested in resource management in Wyoming have been working together the past five years to gather aerial images of rangeland in areas that are not readily accessible by ground.
It can be used like in WHIPP program, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Lake DeSmet Conservation District are using aerial imagery to map leafy spurge locations in a 54,000-acre area.
Leafy spurge is a perennial noxious weed that's spreading on rangelands. Cattle won't eat it and herbicides provide inconsistent control so they're trying to develop an integrated weed management program.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I work for Cat dealer and I was told about this some months ago by our Agriculture Manager. It's already offered in the Challenger MT700 models. In fact there are already quite a few in operation. And oh by the way, John Deere (enemy!), is also offering it in some models.
Depending on how much you want to spend on these tractors you can have an accuracy down to 8 inches per pass in the field.
Of course when he told me this all I could think of was Evil Plan #234.
1. Hack the Omnistar system.
2. Assume control of all Challenger tractors in Indiana.
3. Plow under Terre Haute.
Hey we all have our own little dreams...
I come from a long line of farming folk. I've farmed with my folks, they farm, their folks farmed with other farming folks....
Modern farming folks, armed with this system will need fewer folks around the farm. Fewer folks in the area means a smaller demand for services, so more folks will leave. Finally, fewer and fewer folks will fill the rural landscape.
Will this technology be the nail in the coffin of rural life in the midwestern states, requiring only a few folks to farm for everyone?
What happens to the rest of the folks in more populated states when the system crashes and there are too few farmers to farm fields the hard way?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Be careful about how the "Home" button's programmed.
From the article i got the sense these were just modified regular tractors, not some lightwieght version that reduces compaction.
I invite you to go look at any farmer's (try my dad) row crops. The furrows on fields of row crops such as carrot seed and garlic are laser straight, and they travel the same furrows when working the field all season long. Growing up, Dad used to let me try to cultivate a row at the very edge of the field (where it was easy for him to fix) and it was always a disaster. However after years of doing it, my dad and many of the farmers in our area had it down to where you could look all the way down a 1/4 mile field and see only inches of deviation.
Furthermore, even if someone had some wandering furrows, it's just a matter of staying in them when doing work in the field as the crop grows (spraying, etc).
I can see a system that uses lighter machinery or allows few passes over a field in a season, but if we're talking about driving the same tractors by different methods, aside from the convenience, I don't see how it would yield the spectacular result quoted. Unless they were comparing their tractors to one driven by complete novices who wander all over the field (too much Fosters?)
You know what?
I recently read an article in MIT's Technology Review discussing something similar. It looks like NASA is working on something similar, and for a similar purpose, although different in implementation. Finally, agriculture is getting into advanced new electronics with great ideas backed by government.
Why? Cars, trucks, trains, planes, boats don't.
Remember, these things operate on farm, somone's property, behind fences. Someplace where stray humans are not supposed to be.
Besides, serious farm equipment is big and noisy. If a person or an animal can't tell one is coming and get out of the way, they're already dead.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I worked there in 2000 and the best part was the big red button on the front. it was a little odd having my computer space 20 feet from a tractor with gizmos.
At least part of the motivation for this research is that Australia generally has the poorest soils in the world. The rocks and soil are so old here that for the most part, there just aren't many nutrients left, since they've been leeched out over the millennia. Consequently, soil degradation, salinity and erosion are big topics here. Slowly our argicultural industry is realising they need to address these issues (with things like GPS tractors) otherwise there wil be no soil left for them to farm.
I have to say I think this is a pretty good idea... but...
Farm machinery and computers just don't mix. It sounded like a great idea when they started to put computers into tractors, but it has been nothing but a nightmare to farmers. Wires get too warm and fry or make contact all the time under the hood blowing out chips, dirt gets into the electronics themselves and causes them to quit working. When this happens, can Mr. Farmer fix it? No, it is like a modern vehicle. Mr. Farmer usually has to pay some programmer from 300KMs away to drive down and fix a $5 computer chip. People have lost days due to down time and at a critical time in the year this can mean tens of thousands of dollars a day, not to mention the cost of getting someone to fix it out to the tractor. The cost and problems these computerized tractors have is why no farmer considers it, or if they do they soon realize their mistake and trade the sucker off quick.
Sounds like a great idea until these automated tractors start shutting down and then you start to see the real cost of this venture. Leave the driving to the farmer. Technology still can't compete against the flesh and blood farmer.
I honestly can't see how this will help the farm industry in preventing soil corrosion, seeing as how farmers barely run their tractors over the same area twice. Although the labor benefits are obvious.
You'd think there would be a simpler solution that doesn't implement GPS, kinda like those robot lawn mowers, except smart...
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No joke, just yesterday, I was standing on the greenwich meridian (a big steel line in the ground in Greenwich England) and my eTrex GPS said that the meridian was about 100 metres away, even after staying in the same spot for about 10 minutes, and it claiming accuracy of 7 metres from 6 satellites.
:>
As handy as GPS is, I don't entirely trust it