The aurora generated by the HAARP project was not the first artificial aurora produced by beaming radio waves into the ionosphere from the ground. The first one I'm aware of was in 1970 in Colorado. It was generated by the same processes, although it was not bright enough to be visible by eye. (Journal of Geophysical Research, v77, p6202, 1972). The article also mentions the possibility of using this effect for street lighting. My notes indicate that V.A. Bailey applied for a patent on that process in 1936 (Australian patent application 4982/36 and British patent application 32950/37).
Sounds like one of my dream projects (one I would get to do only in my dreams). I want a robotic garden weeder. It has to be able to either keep track of its position to within a couple of centimeters on a 4 acre field or be able to recognize a variety of crops and differentiate them from weeds. It has to be able to work autonomously, returning to some base during the daytime for charging and operating at night when there are no human obstacles. The crops are grown in (approximately) straight rows to simplify the process. If it keeps track of its position, it would have to communicate with a central computer which would keep a table of crop locations (generated automatically by the planter or possibly stored later by using the weeder in a calibration/learning mode).
One method of differentiating crops and weeds could be simply size of the plant. When using transplants, the crop is automatically the largest thing around by far, so any small emerging plants would simply be wiped out.
Note that gardens are frequently rough ground, so the device has to be able to climb over rocks and sticks occasionally (especially here in New England). Also, location cannot be determined simply by wheel rotation. If weed plants are chewed up, the chewing device will hit rocks or at the minimum, abrasive soil. (Sometime it's not enough just to pull a weed out. If the weed is just laid on its side, it can re-root and will remain the same size as it was, so eventually it can become large enough to look like the crop if using size determinants).
It has to cost less than $5K in prototype. If the safety issues could be addressed, there would be a market for something like this among home gardeners and small farms.
Could be expanded later to recognize and destroy insect pests (differentiating them from beneficial insects).
Automatic fertilizing would require some sort of hopper to store the fertilizer and would significantly increase the size and weight of the device.
Weatherproof, of course.
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The aurora generated by the HAARP project was not the first artificial aurora produced by beaming radio waves into the ionosphere from the ground. The first one I'm aware of was in 1970 in Colorado. It was generated by the same processes, although it was not bright enough to be visible by eye. (Journal of Geophysical Research, v77, p6202, 1972). The article also mentions the possibility of using this effect for street lighting. My notes indicate that V.A. Bailey applied for a patent on that process in 1936 (Australian patent application 4982/36 and British patent application 32950/37).
Sounds like one of my dream projects (one I would get to do only in my dreams). I want a robotic garden weeder. It has to be able to either keep track of its position to within a couple of centimeters on a 4 acre field or be able to recognize a variety of crops and differentiate them from weeds. It has to be able to work autonomously, returning to some base during the daytime for charging and operating at night when there are no human obstacles. The crops are grown in (approximately) straight rows to simplify the process. If it keeps track of its position, it would have to communicate with a central computer which would keep a table of crop locations (generated automatically by the planter or possibly stored later by using the weeder in a calibration/learning mode). One method of differentiating crops and weeds could be simply size of the plant. When using transplants, the crop is automatically the largest thing around by far, so any small emerging plants would simply be wiped out. Note that gardens are frequently rough ground, so the device has to be able to climb over rocks and sticks occasionally (especially here in New England). Also, location cannot be determined simply by wheel rotation. If weed plants are chewed up, the chewing device will hit rocks or at the minimum, abrasive soil. (Sometime it's not enough just to pull a weed out. If the weed is just laid on its side, it can re-root and will remain the same size as it was, so eventually it can become large enough to look like the crop if using size determinants). It has to cost less than $5K in prototype. If the safety issues could be addressed, there would be a market for something like this among home gardeners and small farms. Could be expanded later to recognize and destroy insect pests (differentiating them from beneficial insects). Automatic fertilizing would require some sort of hopper to store the fertilizer and would significantly increase the size and weight of the device. Weatherproof, of course.
1. Set up dummy email server that goes nowhere. 2. Sign up for spam program. 3. Send spam to dummy server. 4. Collect $24/day ($8760/year) The more people who do this, the broker the spammers will become.