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Man Finally Makes the Weed-Removing Robot
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jul 04, 2007 09:40 PM
from the it-only-listens-to-reggae dept.
from the it-only-listens-to-reggae dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the Ludington Daily News, Michigan, Danish agricultural engineers have built a robot to help farmers with weeds. The Hortibot is about 3-foot-by-3-foot, is self-propelled, and uses global positioning system (GPS). It can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds and eliminate them by using its weed-removing attachments. It's also very environmentally friendly because it can reduce herbicide usage by 75 percent. But so far, it's only a prototype and the Danish engineers need to find a manufacturer for distribution."
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Well it's about time (Score:5, Funny)
What would be even cooler (Score:5, Funny)
Transporter_ii
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Re:What would be even cooler (Score:5, Funny)
That would be awesome... if the cops catch your robot tending to the weed it can be programmed to say uhh I forgot who I'm growing this hash for man I have only so much RAM to devote to remembering things and I just can't remember who programmed me to grow all this sticky bud and there's nothing the pigs can do because your robot will be programmed to enjoy prison and be willing to spend years there in standby mode to conserve battery life but if the grower is some guy you'd have to promise him that you'll commute his sentence so he can perjure himself all he wants for you knowing you'll eventually bail him out... but under the existing system you can't do that unless you're the president who must have access to a mean supply of weed because you can see how worried he's been looking lately.
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Re:What would be even cooler (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm sorry, The Matrix was just on... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Well it's about time (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It recognizes weeds? Excellent. What else? (Score:5, Funny)
Sarah Connor?
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My mortal enemy (Score:5, Funny)
Right after I get up off the couch
What does this thing look like? (Score:4, Insightful)
They say it identifies 25 types of weeds but at what accuracy? I would think accuracy is more important than total number of detectable weeds. If it misidentified your crop as weed you might lose a lot. Imagine coming home one day and it has pulled out or burned your entire crop and it just sits there with a grin.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Also, the Danish engineers probably will have to arm their robots to protect them from angry, paranoid pot-growers everywhere.
Finally, a robot with cat-shaped grippers and a cat-Taser will be welcome, although a simple cat-sized mulching attachment would be just fine by me.
This is what it looks like (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.hortibot.dk/index.html [hortibot.dk]
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Hello, We'd Like to Buy You Out (Score:5, Insightful)
Ho Hum, call me when they perfect the (Score:5, Funny)
This is great, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm.... lasers... (Score:4, Funny)
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Why has it taken so long? (Score:5, Funny)
bah! (Score:3, Funny)
Obligatory Joke (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, Bush announces a major victory in the war on drugs.
Link to Hortibot project (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't look like they've gone too far yet, but interesting nevertheless.
Jokes are cool, But let's talk about farm robots. (Score:4, Interesting)
I would appear that the farmers expect to have severe labor problems if the federal government succeeds in preventing hundreds of thousands of Mexicans from entering the US without documentation. Farmers depend on lots of low-cost seasonal labor to get their harvest picked. Not so much for grains, but for fruits, berries, and vegetables.
Presently, as I understand the situation, thousands of migrant laborers follow the harvest and provide the long, hard bend-pick-stoop labor needed to get the produce off the ground and onto inspection belts and shipping boxes. Most (I believe, and I may be wrong) of these migrant labors are Mexicans and Central Americans living in the USA without immigration papers. This situation has been like this for about 100 years, since the mechanization of farm planting equipment led to much larger harvests. Using low-cost labor has been the only way to harvest the food. And low-cost has come to mean illegal immigrants. These people have been ruthlessly exploited and little had been done to improve their situation until Cesar Chavez energized the United Farm Workers union in the late 1960's. However the massive overpopulation of Mexico has led to the need for Mexico to send millions of their people to the USA. Stoop labor during harvest season has been the main source of employment for these people, so the cycle of exploitation begins anew.
The introduction of high-technology into a field dominated by serf labor clearly upsets the standard order of things. The robotic technology has always been too expensive and the serf labor too cheap for the any high-tech developments in food harvesting. But if the cost of labor goes up (due to effective immigration law enforcement, a really big if ) at the same time that technological costs go down, then this will lead to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.
Maybe, and not all at once. For the robots cost a lot of money. A migrant worker can pick a lot of food for the cost of the robot at $70,000. And immigration laws are never seriously enforced after a certain period of 'clamping down on illegals', a period which we are going through now. There simply is no other option to getting the food picked. This situation isn't going to change. Expect all the high-technology in farm work to take place in Europe where they don't have the masses of undocumented and untrackable migrant farm workers to pick the food.
In reality, there is a real need for harvest robots. But it is not in harvesting food; it is in harvesting land mines. No one is going to just walk out into a mine field and just pick up the bombs by hand (regardless of how many little plastic 'keys to heaven' the mullahs give them). And do it day in, day out, for very little money. Even if for some insane reason they actually wanted to, they would eventually all get blown up. This is true robot work. The harvest robot manufacturers should get some NGO to finance all their R&D in return for donating thousands of robot units to clear the vast minefields. Unfortunately, there is no one like Princess Diana around anymore to champion this cause. Shit, maybe we could get Paris Hilton to rally the cause. Good luck!
When aliens land... (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations... (Score:5, Funny)
So the Danes finally managed to clone "Mexicans"?
Just get a herd of goats instead (Score:5, Informative)
Of course if your problem is bracken, bring on the Robot. Nothing eats that stuff.
Re:Weed-removing attachments? (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA you will notice that lasers are in fact one of the "weed-removing attachments" they have.
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Re:Weed-removing attachments? (Score:5, Funny)
So, in other words, it smokes the weed...
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