Robots to Help Farmers

Roland Piquepaille writes "Robots designed to help farmers have been built before, but this time, engineers from the University of Warwick have chosen to develop robots that will reduce farm labor costs. In recent months, they've built a robotic mushroom picker, an inflatable conveyor belt and a grass cutting robot that might also be used by golf course owners."

Comments

Will this be like Hybrid cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

where the initial cost is exhuberant, the pay off is small, and it pays for itself in labor and fuel after a few decades of use - well after their expected mechanical/efficiency lifespan?? I can't imagine there's a whole lot of money floating around on farms these days for robotic farm hands.

Nis

Re:Will this be like Hybrid cars?

[dancpsu]

The cost of labor would be much higher without illegal immigrants from mexico taking the mushroom picking jobs that americans "just won't do". Instead of spurring innovation into more mechanized farming, we are spurring innovation into getting more cheap labor over the border. I would imagine that eventually robots will take over these jobs anyway and you will go to your automated grocery store in your self-driving car to purchase food grown on an automated farm.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I've thought about whether or not it would make sense to have circular fields with robot farm machines tethered to a central post.

One problem with circular fields is that the area between fields and between fields & lot-lines goes wasted. You can completely tile a plane (e.g. Nebraska) with rectangles, but complete coverage with (finite sized) circles is impossible.

That said, in desert countries (e.g middle east), where irrigation is absolutely required, you do see circular fields, separated by sand. The only stuff that grows is that watered by central pivot irrigation.

Tip of the iceburg

[Locke2005]

I've always thought the perfect application for robots was in pest control. Let loose thosands of small robots into the fields programmed to search out and destroy mice, harmful insects, crows, etc., and you eliminate the need for insecticides. Sort of the high-tech way to do organic farming. You could also train them to spot plant diseases, and quarantine any plants that show symptoms before they spread to other plants. Yes, this requires several magnitudes of cost reduction before it becomes feasible, but it is going to happen eventually.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that farmers could benefit from more robotics technology. I've thought about whether or not it would make sense to have circular fields with robot farm machines tethered to a central post. Can someone tell me if this has ever been tried?

This is a bad idea, think about it from a mathematical perspective.

By using a circle (no matter how large), you're alaways going to have parts of the land that will not covered by a sweep out from the center. Imagine a circle inside a box, if the robot always goes around and the maximum distance it goes out is the radius, then the corners of the box will never be tilled/seeded/harvested/etc.

Over large plots of land, this seemingly "small" area can definitely add up.

Also, nobody sells land in circles, or else the aliens doing crop circles would have stopped years ago...

No, but early threshing machines

[Flying pig]

Were hauled from side to side of fields by engines which could be moved slowly along the edges, so the field was threshed in a raster pattern. The prime movers, being cast and wrought iron steam engines, were to heavy to roll back and forwards across the fields.

Not strictly on topic perhaps, but goes to show that there is nothing much new under the sun.

Still, the whole thing reminds me of the Australian attempts to build robot sheep shearers, a brilliant idea if you don't mind cleaning the blood off the wall afterwards. With all the ineducable people in our society with nothing to do but take drugs and steal to pay for them (estimated 280 000 in the UK, how many in the US I dread to think), I would have thought (just as Huxley did in Brave New World) that the real answer is to pay adequately for farm laboring jobs so we have something for the less intelligent in society to do. What we paid for in food we would get back in reduced taxes and insurance premiums.

Re:No, but early threshing machines

[G-funk]

Here's a quick tip: western society is desperately short of tradesmen. It's a shitty job for 3 years, then you're earning fuckloads more than your mates who've been in university for the same time (unless they're lawyers / investment bankers). People who don't work but sit around on the dole and stealing / dealing for drug money do it coz they want to, or it's cool, or it's "the way it's always been round here in macquarie fields", not coz there's no choice. Of course they tell different when there's a camera around, but that don't make it so.

Re:Or you know... you could use cows/goats

[WillAffleckUW]

and a grass cutting robot that might also be used by golf course owners.
followed by
Or you know, they could just get a bunch of cows to do the job instead.

Hmm. We used to have a goat that "mowed" our two-acre lawn (on a 42 acre tree farm). I think it gave milk too.

And, it didn't rust.

In fact, it ate cans. So, if my goat met the farming robot, it would probably be thinking "Hmm. Lunch!"

Revenge tastes best when accompanied by chewing sounds.