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Startup Testing Mobile Farmbots

Posted by Soulskill on from the robot-get-me-carrots dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports on Harvest Automation, a Massachusetts company developing small robots that can perform basic agricultural labor. The ones currently being tested in greenhouses and plant nurseries are 'knee-high, wheeled machines.' 'Each robot has a gripper for grasping pots, a deck for carrying pots, and an array of sensors to keep track of where it is and what's around it. Teams of robots zip around nursery fields, single-mindedly spacing and grouping plants. Key to making the robots flexible and cost-effective is designing them to work only with information provided by their sensors. They don't construct a global map of their environment, and they don't use GPS. The robots have sensors that detect boundary markers, a laser range finder to detect objects in front of them, and a gyroscope for navigating by dead reckoning. The robots determine how far they've traveled by keeping track of wheel rotations.'"

7 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. This would solve... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    ...a whole lot of U.S. immigration problems.

    1. Re:This would solve... by wanzeo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, something like this can't really take off precisely because of cheap labor. Cheap bots will only be capable of limited tasks while requiring close supervision, and expensive ones will cost much more than a minimum wage laborer.

      Not too long ago I was looking into what it would cost to build a (nearly) fully automated greenhouse. The problem is, no matter how efficient or clever your system is, you simply cannot compete with the cost of human labor at the very bottom of the skills spectrum.

      It is frustrating, because it seems like we should automate the more basic and repetitive tasks first, but in a market based economy, is simply isn't, well, economical.

    2. Re:This would solve... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Depends on the farm. A smaller farm owned by a family might be best off with some bots like this, assuming a reasonable price. Hiring people is expensive. Employee theft, insurance needed for lawsuits, payroll taxes, hiring supervisors, dealing with unemployment claims, etc. Large farms have the infrastructure for this. Smaller family farms are better served by dealing with getting something mechanical/electronic working that can do a basic job well.

      I've been seeing this with some crops. An acquaintance has a tractor that is completely automated when it comes to tilling, planting, and harvesting. He sets GPS beacons, fills the tractor up with fuel, and at the right schedule the thing moves around the farm, stopping when the wheat hopper is full for manual dumping, and when that is done, the tractor continues where it left off.

      There is no shame in automating these cheap jobs. This means that migrant kids actually might get to go to school instead of going to age 18 with not even a completed elementary school education because they are in the fields.

      China is doing this too... they know that the US has the ability to stop food shipments at any time, so have been developing technologies to make arable land in the Sahel and other parts of Africa to feed their population, and part of that is automated tilling/planting/irrigation/harvesting.

  2. Visions by NEDHead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    of Silent Running come to mind

  3. This is obviously the future by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The efficiency of farming (yield value per area+inputs) is going to have to grow a lot as global population increases and gets richer. This is obviously one step in that direction. Sure, this robot is laughably primitive compared to Google's self-driving car, but future generations will do better. I think that in 20 years, we'll be able to intersperse multiple simultaneous crops in the same field, which is good for the soil, reduces the need for fertilizer and pesticide, and generates a more value.

    The most important reason why we don't see this sort of farming on a large scale is because it requires much more fine-motor work and is incompatible with the machines we use today. But once those machines get substantially cheaper and more dexterous than people, I think we'll make this transition. Our food will be better for it, and there will be more of it. I don't think that this is very far off in the future.

    1. Re:This is obviously the future by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm a bit concerned about all of this advancement to support extended population growth. My gut feeling is that we are just setting up ourselves for a big fall the more we detach ourselves from nature. Like a house of cards. It can only go so high before the entire system collapses. It's just a matter of when. For example, a high-altitude nuclear warhead my never cause bodily harm. But the EMP it releases is enough to shutdown entire nations with all microchips fried. That means no transportation and running water. Within weeks, people start dieing and bodies decomposing where they last crawled for survival. Truly scary stuff.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    2. Re:This is obviously the future by msobkow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      we'll be able to intersperse multiple simultaneous crops in the same field...

      The most important reason why we don't see this sort of farming on a large scale is because it requires much more fine-motor work...

      Soil degrades if you don't mix your crops over time, but it's not a process that would "leach" from one small plot to it's neighbour. As long as crops are rotated annually, you're good to go. Bigger machines are more efficient at harvesting. Having multiple crop types also means needing multiple machine types, adding to expense.

      As far as I know, small plots were only used for family produce by the old family farms, but the bulk of the land was turned over quarter by quarter to specific crops. Things may be different in vegetable or fruit farms/orchards, but we don't really have those in Saskatchewan.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.