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Startup Testing Mobile Farmbots
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.'"
of Silent Running come to mind
If you need a bit better pattern recognition or control there's thousands of people willing to do farming from their PCs for free.
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.
And visions of Tom Selleck shooting our garden tending overlords appear in my mind....
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
From my hazy recollection of American history, the cotton (en)gin(e), made it possible to process cotton with a lot less labor making slaves less necessary(?) and set the stage for the civil war. Or something like that.
The general idea of your post may be correct, but I think it's the opposite. The cotton gin made slaves more necessary to the south (or at least so they believed) because it made seed-heavy cotton varieties into a viable crop. This cotton would grow well where other crops didn't. Without the gin, the plant wouldn't have been economical and slavery would have continued to gradually fade. Some of this is conjecture, it's hard to speculate accurately on possible alternative paths of history, but slavery was supposedly declining before the cotton gin was made available.
... the cotton (en)gin(e), made it possible to process cotton with a lot less labor making slaves less necessary(?)
Nope. By reducing the necessary labor, the cotton gin made the cotton business far more profitable, thus increasing the demand for slaves to grow and harvest the cotton.
Agricultural robots may have a similar effect. By making labor intensive crops (strawberries, fruit, vegetables, etc.) more profitable, production will shift in that direction instead of crops like grain that require little labor. But since not all tasks can be easily automated, the demand for human farm labor may go up instead of down.
Here is a picture of the agro robots. It's OK, there are no goats around.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Like slavery, society is growing less tolerant of the current situation of illegal labor. Though different people have different reasons for it, a large number of people will not tolerate the situation continuing as is. Some people are feeling this desire for change and are looking for other answers and these type of robots might be one of them. Either way, we're in the beginning of a new era where there are far more people to do labor than there is need for labor. Our next great challenge will be how we address all the people who are jobless due to their labor not being needed anymore. Though there is a lot of talk of retraining for higher skilled jobs, it will not be long until robots can replace doctors, engineers, scientists, programmers and other high skilled jobs and not all of the people will be able to make that leap in the first place. Right now, things are not looking so good for us as a society.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
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.
Pruning and harvesting trees is a difficult problem to solve, but mathematically very interesting. After all, what is the best way to prune an apple tree or a vine? Ask two farm workers how to prune the same tree and you will get a long discussion with no definite answer, but there certainly is method in the madness, which could be reduced to a tree algorithm. This is the 21st century evolution of the the 20th century automatic harvesters for simple grain/grass crops.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
Completely true. When the "cost" of a human is perhaps a few hundred dollars, beneficial technologies wither on the vine as our living standards fall trying to "compete". That is exactly what we are witnessing right now -- a race to the bottom.
in a market based economy, is simply isn't, well, economical.
A market economy can't exist without sensible government regulation of negative externalities. Immigrants are a negative externality. The US government has completely failed to regulate it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
America, in fact the west, has a serious issue with illegals. However, the west, is by far, the worst. We have neo-cons that encourage illegals to be here working for below prevailing wages, while not paying taxes. Then we have dems leaders that push for amnesty and allowing more illegals in, as long as they get amnesty. That is just plain twisted. Now, why do these illegals come to America (and canada, EU, UK, and Australia)? Because even below minimum wage, they still make more money than what they make in their own nations. The problem is that western levels of goods, count on taxes being paid as well as re-investment in the local economy. As such illegals who work in the nation, but then send the money out of the nation, are just as bad as those that outsource to China who manipulates money, dumps monster amounts of pollution on the planet (in 2015, China will dump more than 50% of all CO2; in 2019 +-, they will have accounted for 1/2 of ALL co2 that man has ever emitted, and that assumed a slower growth path then they are on; worse, it does not include their SO2, mercury, lead, chemical pollutions, etc, etc, etc that are dumped in the Sea of China, The pacific ocean, and in our shared airs). Basically, Illegals are not cheap enough to warrent keeping them here, and the real costs is the damage to western society. Those libs that back giving jobs to illegals because they deserve it are about as stupid as as the neo-cons: they will destroy the west and esp. America, due to lack of thought.
The only real way to save the west, and ultimately, the world, is to automate. In particular, food should be automated. Right now, less than 2% of American labor goes into Ag. One of the bigger issues is that we now import a lot of food. But we increasingly import shrimp from farms in South America and Asia. How bad are these? HORRIBLE. Both use loads of anti-biotics. IN addition, they do it not in isolated ponds, but along the shoreline. THis is some of the most important areas on the earth, and it is being destroyed to send sickly shrimp to the west. Insane.
Likewise, we get loads of food from China. Hell, Nestle is now producing candy in China. SICK. At this time, upper middle class Chinese buy food from USA, Canada, Australia, and EU. Why? Because they know that the good that is coming from China is loaded with mercury, lead, and many other pollutants. And this is happening again, because China is cheating, and companies like Nestle are greedy as all hell.
Ever been on a Chinese commercial fishing boat? I have talked to a fishery person that was working on one to make certain that China was not stealing or mis-labelling. She was telling afterwards that she no longer eats fish unless it is from USA, Canada, EU, UK, or Japan. She tells me that China was the worst. Disgusting conditions.
Robotics will solve a lot of these issues. We can grow our own shrimp here cheaper than importing them. Likewise, the same is true of veggies, fish, etc.
It is time for America, and the west, to take a stand and say enough is enough. We need to quit backing those that pollute and destroy our planet. Time to put a tax on all goods based on pollution from where they come from.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
BS. America can not afford to outsource everything. It is destroying us. Far far better to automate the low end jobs. As it is, even the illegals are not working those. Less than 5% of all illegals work in Ag. The majority work in Service (restaurants, janitorial, etc) and CONSTRUCTION. How good of pay is in Construction? Well, many of these illegals are under paid at 60K/year. How do they make 60/year? They do not pay taxes. Far better to automate the Ag portions (easier to do than you can believe), much of the service, and even parts of construction. Then not only will we have much lower unemployment (send back all illegals except for those that qualify for dream act; that would give us about 5% unemployment), but we would have less drains on gov. and improved tax collections.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
. . . while the tundra is warming (and turning into swamps, not arable farmland), the vast subtropical regions where most of the world's population lives will be subject to desertification and/or devastating storms.
Harsh winters are GOOD for agriculture. They stir up the soil and kill off insects and weeds. We'll be getting fewer of those hard winters as things warm up.
Robot farmhands are nice for societies with lots of excess wealth. Don't expect them to save our asses.
And it wasn't that long ago (just a generation or two) that our kids did all the same work that illegals do today. Every kid had a summer job, on the farm or in some related capacity.
I've sometimes thought that a required period of such labour (perhaps earning college money in escrow) would put a different perspective into the heads of today's youth.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
Humans consume resources. If you're concerned about limited resources, you should be concerned with limiting human population growth. Hiring immigrants does exactly the opposite -- it subsidizes population growth and provides a "relief valve" for failed governments.
I'll repeat that for you in case you missed it. Welcoming immigrants simply perpetuates the poverty and the oppressive governments you seem to be so concerned about.
Walling most of them out would absolutely make us more prosperous, because we have more resources per capita than anywhere on Earth. In the long run it would make them more prosperous as well.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
That's easy enough to fix. Just have the workers unionize. That will triple the cost of your human labor right there and then your robots become cost effective.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Let's look at some numbers, then. Assuming these bots have a relatively low cost of operation, (big if, I know), and they each cost $30K, and you need at least a 100% in three-year return, then you'd have to generate $10K/year of utility. The minimum cost for people is $7.50/hour minimum wage (a grossly under-accurate simplification). Assuming the robots can be kept busy, and assuming their time must be worth $10K/year, their hourly cost becomes 10000 / (365 * 24) or $1.14 / hour. In the video, they don't appear to meed much supervision. At least, just for the task of shuffling pots back and forth between defined areas. It sounds as though you had a capacity utilization problem. Did your automation sit idle most of the day?
Now we're out of school, with degrees, with no jobs for us, and we're berated and jeered at because we refuse to flip burgers and mow lawns.
I will refer you to this , which I saw on reddit the other day. It is interesting.
Also, I attribute the economic pain we are feeling now on the effects of the world slowly approaches an "average" standard of living. So as the very large third world get a slightly bit richer, the very small first world must get a LOT poorer.
So the "I did everything I was told, I have a college degree, and I demand to stay at my childhood standard of living" argument is valid, but simply not going to happen. In a world of limited resources, "fair" counts for absolutely nothing.
This is square peg/ round hole stuff. It's generally not cost effective to force machinery into a role that was defined by the task itself to be done by human labor. "Farming", as it has existed for thousands of years, is the problem here. The solution is to throw away the entire process and build it from scratch to be handled entirely by machinery. Then it's simply not necessary to worry about "humanoid" machinery and its inherent problems and weaknesses.
Build hydroponic beds in layers a hundred feet high. Make infrastructure weigh tons if that's more efficient and resilient. Machinery and hydraulics are orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than mere humans. Use those strengths to redefine the entire food and organic materials production industries the way it redefined the heavy industries of the 20th century. Ever watch a robot stuff tiny components into a machine-made PC board? Ever watch a wave-soldering machine? The electronics we are all using right now to participate in this forum wouldn't even be possible if millions of our devices had to be built by hand using microscopes and tweezers, regardless of how little the workers were paid. The entire modern electronic age was built with machines. It's time for the production of our food to be automated too.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
A little secret about those GPS tractors that you didn't hit on:
They work out the most efficient plowing, planting, and harvesting routes, as well. If you or I climbed on a tractor, we would just drive from end to end of the field, only varying our course for a tree or something. The GPS guided tractor maps out every single pass, before it ever starts. The result is a modest increase in crop yield. I emphasize "modest" - but if a farmer realizes a 3% increase in crop yield, with the very same investment, he has more money to spend on - uhhh - more robots?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No, and one advantage is keeping "Third World" workers OUT of modern countries.
Like it or not, exclusivity protects economic advantage.
Get rid of the need for cheap labor (which exclusively comes from "less accomplished" humans) and you can keep such humans from burdening your society.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I'd love to see a few MO and Wall-E style bots around in the garden centres. That would make my morning coffee so much more entertaining :)
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE