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.'"

Hook it up to Facebook

[grantek]

If you need a bit better pattern recognition or control there's thousands of people willing to do farming from their PCs for free.

Much room for farm bots

[flyingfsck]

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.

Re:This would solve...

[benjamindees]

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.

This is needed like 10 years ago

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Let 3rd world workers do it instead

[WindBourne]

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.

Of course . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . 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.

Re:Let 3rd world workers do it instead

[Reziac]

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.

Re:This is obviously the future

[LordLucless]

The efficiency of farming (yield value per area+inputs) is going to have to grow a lot as global population increases and gets richer

Not necessarily. Using the most modern farming techniques, we produce far more food than the population that grows it actually requires. The problem is, the areas that have the largest (and most quickly growing) populations, are the areas that use the least effective farming techniques.

Apart from stopping the wars that suck up their manpower, and pillage their crops, getting modern farming in widespread use in the third world is the big step to combating world hunger. And if the pattern is anything like what we've seen, once their standard of living is raised, they stop having as many children, and population will taper off. Much of the western world (US and Australia I know for sure) is currently at below-replacement levels of reproduction.

Re:This would solve...

[benjamindees]

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.

Re:This is obviously the future

[YouDieAtTheEnd]

If a country that possesses nuclear warheads and ICBMs is pissed off enough to launch one at you, you've got a lot more to worry about than whether your tractor has a microcontroller in it or not. In other words, an atmospheric EMP pulse is only going to be set off in preparation for a full scale ground assault so your ass will be drafted in about 24 hours flat. Look on the bright side though, the military's got lots of K rations.