Not sure why most of the time the video was up in people's faces etc instead of simply showing the particular robot being discussed. Kinda seemed like they were NOT trying to show something.
Yes. And panning shots over a old CRT TV with no case, an old PS2 plug on a cable, people pushing buttons on a laptop, a RC car with a 3D printed body driving aimlessly around a field, and a rendering of a concept "planter" in a field...
because they didnt have herbicides - i know, no-till, but if youre working on virgin soil (as they were) the first thing you do it plough to have any sort of chance
Ha ha, you are being way too logical John. Of course, you are right, there are actually very light tractors of 25HP or less and they wouldn't compress the soil much as there is less than 150kg weight per tire. Some might say "Hey, look there is a solution looking for a problem, ha ha" In fact, I am willing to openly bet that some of those tractors will end up costing nearly the same as these capable little robots. $1100 USD. Some virgin soil, however really needs aeration, oxygen, nitrogen, etc at least the first time, since perhaps nothing has turned over that soil in more than 600+ years. That being said, I like this idea, cause I feel that I can build one or 30 of these. I love the raspberry PI and arduinos. So, I like this idea, but I am not sure whether I would use this little puppy alone when there could be nearly 500 acres to take care of. But it bears some attention, so I will keep an eye on it. Its interesting.
nature makes compacted soil by a variety of means,,,to counter the compaction inherent in a sedimentary type of soil profile, one must employ some means to overcome, hence plowing.
Right! If people have always done things a certain way then there is never a need to research into ways to do it better. Progress is a stupid thing and science is not needed for anything in the world. We have got it.
But there is no robot for harvesting, so you'll need combines or harvesters of some sort, these are the biggest compactors of soil... then you'll need to manage the straw or bale it, so you'll need big heavy tractors for that... I love the sentiment and passion but the concept is fundamentally floored. Tom is the only robot our of all of them that makes sense, focus on him!
Who plows nowadays? No-til farming is almost completely embraced in Australia at least. Huge amounts of the US use low-til or no-til. I have noticed there is still a lot of tilling in Europe and Asia. A product, I understand, of small scale operations and subsidised agriculture. We already measure every seed planted in relation to both IR soil scan behind the seeding disks and the subsequent yield. Any decent air seeder can tell you where each seed is in the field. Nothing new in this.
@@goatvision6908 Sorry, but there is something new to it. The decent air seeder can tell you where each seed is. Correct. But it can not say where some weed is and can not take an action against it. But please see also my other comment where I describe that the here shown system is way too complex. I believe that it can be made much more easier, faster and more reliable.
Shandor True. And I’m not saying that robots don’t have a future in farming but it is a long way off. But kudos to these guys for trying. Every journey begins with one step forward.
I'm appreciate for implementing the technology in agriculture.... im sure it is future......good luck guys...keep going....hope good ..make world a nice place..
Everyone thinks the only reason for plowing is to fix compaction. That is true and necessary in high clay content soils, but a lot of people also do it for weed control.
0:17 what a shot 5:22 I was curious about this why you just have the phone sticking out... rain? Maybe interference can't put it in body. At least a cover of some kind or is it temporary?
Hold on. There's a case for larger robots: In NSW, they mixed cattle with such a robot successfully; the cows even come to it when the recorded voice of the boss calls them. However, I applaud your efforts and hope you make a success of it.
May I encourage you guys to collaborate with the “Ants Canada”? He has over 80 acres where he is running a forest restoration project and a sustainable organic farming project which focuses on insect habitat, integration, and sustainability. Sounds right up your alley.
heavy equipment does not do that much compaction. Tractor tires are 50 cm wide especially to do less compaction. Soil needs to be plowed because of many reasons among which is breaking it up for easier root growth. The overall idea is good - just learn your reasons well first.
Great philosophy powered with ecological understanding. If you use chemicals, IGRs, drags against bio-system, it is striking back by variant, surviving, knock-down registering, after all, we will knock down by what we have done. They show affections to every life from "per plant farming" which is based on a philanthropical philosophy to every life.
Rachel's phone hanging off in the sunlight is sure to expand the batteries and catch on fire. Put the phone under the cover with a fan to suck out the heat. How do those inserted seeds outgrow the weeds? I thought the whole purpose for plowing was to till in the weeds to kill them and provide nutrients for what you plant. I think large tractors are right out and a robot about the size of a riding lawnmower with a tiller underneath could break up the soil to make way for the new seeds. It could till, level and seed at the same time. And how is Tom going to navigate in a corn field or a field of hemp? And don't you need furrows for irrigation? I think you guys are awesome innovators thinking outside the box, but selling to farmers who have a culture based on tradition won't be easy unless you can prove yields better than their current methods, in every possible crop. Your robots will need solar panels to be able to keep going and hopefully the cellphone strength will be good on those 1,000 acre farms in the U.S. midwest.
Point application of fertilizer is promising, but that little robot is going to need to make A LOT of trips. Some crops like wheat can tolerate being run over by a little robot, other crops like corn or soybeans, probably can't.
I'd like to / we should build an open source flying drone software to give the drone a mapped area where it will harvest all of the fruit of all plants in that area automatically. The drone could track each piece of fruit updating the website with info like how many tomatoes, how many mangos, almonds, onions, chili peppers, etc it expects to harvest the next day so that local residents could request the fruit to be delivered straight from the plant to their doorstep. I will make everything open source and donate the drone (with solar panels to charge it) too so the food will be free for all within its area. The amount of fruit that matures on plants, falls to the ground and is wasted all around us is staggering, plus the same drone could also recognize ideal areas to plant different seeds and plant, care for, track and harvest them too. The drone, or another version of it would also be able to prune and harvest coconut trees as well, landing by grasping onto the upper trunk of the tree, then driving up and down and around for the automated trimming and harvesting. Anyone want to join me in the project to help feed the world for free? In the future, I plan to add a sub group to C'8 (www.c8coordinate.com) under our search filter Aid Type / Food & Water where an automated donated solar charged food harvesting drone can plant, manage and harvest fruit and vegetables within its mapped urban (for ex) region, updating the C'8 aid offer posts updating the system including predicting maturity quantities and dates with all food delivered direct from the plant to a user's door all for free. People within the region will be able to opt in or partially in selectively allowing the drone to harvest from their property, sharing to the system. Call me overly positive, but I think we’re leaving the era of ‘greed is good’ and celebrating wealth and entering an #EraOfAltruism and equality. Let’s #AutomateEverything and #SkipToAbundance.
First, I'm not sure I see exactly how this helps the local community. Also, harvesting has been ignored so I'm thinking of crops like maize, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, cabbage, kale... How do these get harvested efficiently without heavy machinery in a way that won't interfere or crush the soil?
How to belittle thousands of hours of work in one sentence. This is no different than any other tech company trying to drum up investors. If they talked about product specifics someone else would beat them to the market and steal their lunch
You demonstrate total cluelessness about what it takes for outsiders to bring revolutionary tools to an industry dominated by a handful of mega-corporations.
Where are the results? It's a farming robot, so where is the produce? Their is potential for robotics in agriculture, but we need to see a little more than a rc car with a GPS and a CAD design of the future full scale model. No field owner is ever going to buy your product unless you show them increased yield and profit, neither of which you have demonstrated.
Horizontal inovation is using an old, well-examined, therefore already cheap enough and safety enough to know its robustness technology. Gunpei Yokoi , Nintendo's genius engineer 's basic attitude to develop idea.
i see they didn't mention image recognition at all. how are you going to tell weed from rightful plant with a positioning precision of 2 cms. you'd need more like a mm for that, if even. it does help though, anything outside of that 2 cm2 can be destroyed. although the rc car didn't seem to have any tool for that. autonomy also? those batteries didn't look very big to me. and why keep at field empty like that, it is begging to be eroded by wind and water?
Is this a joke "tom, dick, and harry"? Have these guys actually spent any real time on a working farm? There are improvements that could be made on farms, but the market drives the sort of conditions that you see on farms. If you were to look into any major industry there are things that the end user would rather not think about, for example all of the tech these guys are using, not a pretty sight.
I might not know better but it seems to me that this technology development appears a bit naïve in its making considering the equipment you're using. The smart part is the software and I agree with that but it doesn't mean the robot needs to have 3rd grade components
What happens when the crop grows? How will a robot get to say a wheat plant in the field, you'd need loads of tramways which surely means less yeild?! And what crops how these robots be used form potatoes and oil seed rape grow in very different ways surely these can't do it all?!
So. No. Try HMI. It works and is cost effective. The objective is to not add chemicals. No farmers were harmed in the making of this video. And. No farmers were involved either.
Amazing ideas and I really hope this becomes the future of farming but I'd worry about a small robots vulnerability to theft or vandalism. Thousands of pounds worth of kit on its own in a field that you can pick up and walk off with 😕
They spent plenty of time building RC car instead of buying something like Clearpath robot and focusing on the problem. Startups like this one, which ignore the existing technology and do not have clear objectives, are likely to fail.
Please ...make robot for work by human . He protact seed . He play sound for tree... begore trees broth very smoothly and very comfertanaly. And it was protect farm to fire He has fire alaram ... And he call his orner to save his farm ................................................... You intrest in may ideas ..so you send massage please.............. Tank you..
These people clearly have no idea what farming is, come to India and your *every* plan will fail in an instant. And about the ploughing part, here people used ox to plough fields earlier.
not rely. The reliability of 1 tractor vs reliability of 1 little robot comes down to fundamentals. If you put hydraulics, engine explosions, bulky mass, moving 500hp with a gear system ... takes materials closer to their breaking limits. And let's not mention cost. To compare apples to apples imagine a big tractor vs exactly the same tractor 100x smaller. The little tractor is very little - the wheel is 2.5 cm. The steering wheel is 1mm. etc. Now which is more likely to break? The big one since the strength of the materials is the same - but on the big tractor the demands on the exact same materials will be higher. This is why an ant falling 100meters will not die, but you falling 100meters gonna end-up badly damaged and dead. Which proves that smaller is better. Given cost, plastic is cheap, 3d printable - smaller is definitely the way to go. Given the field is filled with crickets, worms, mice etc - all small creatures - and not filled with elephants and giraffes - this is proof that evolution has chosen the same route - or was God or whatever. Point is smaller is the way to go from first principles. Then is cost, then is redundancy, then is the fact that you just gonna trow away when something breaks, and using economies of scale you just gonna buy a new one each time - like with our phones now. And you gonna have 1000 little robots which overall give you 99% reliability - over 3 decades - for cheaper - which that tractor simply can't provide. Nokia phones work even today 15 years later - don't they? There is no reason the same can be said for small agricultural equipment if the incentives are aligned as such. Is not an issue of engineering. Its all about incentives.
this approach is a dead end ... this will not go any further because huge farms will need many of the robots to manage which will become financially infeaseble , however this could be very helpful in Mars and moon habitat where the scale will be small ... otherwise this is just a fancy project .... dont take me wrong i am just expressing my personal views ... i am from india and i have around 17 years of experience in AGRI TECH . i am talking from my experience ...
I think that a fleet of small robotic machines (although larger than shown) is a feasible alternative to very large machinery. There is a serious problem,however, in the layers of technology that builds up & the farmer is challenged to learn all of the systems. My grandfathers' machnes were 100% mechanical & they could adjust & fix with simple hand tools. My father's machines included mechanical, electrical, & hydraulic. Required more diagnostic knowledge & specialised tools to fix any problems & more skilled operators. Our most modern machines have digital sensing & controls layered on top of the previous systems, even the manufacturers tech people have trouble diagnosing & fixing problems. All these complications move the farmer farther away from actually working with the land & crops, etc. As a farmer I need tech that elegantly simplifies, while increasing effectiveness, without adding layers of complexity.
when you say "financially infeasible" what do you have in mind? How much you expect to pay for a robot and how many robots you think will be needed - such that the combination of both is financially infeasible? Please use the specific numbers you have in mind even if they turn out to be wrong.