patrick.net

That is badass!

This is a thing that could completely revolutionize farming. Especially when they scale it down. Maybe your farm is only 50 acres and you need a machine that can do one acre a day, just keep it working all the time. Should be much smaller and much cheaper, say $50k vs $500k. That’s in range for a farm that size.

And small scale gardeners would be interested in one that could weed an acre in a week, say costing $5000.
And backyard gardeners might want a $1000 model that weeds their quarter acre garden automatically every week.

This kind of stuff is how you change the world for the better with technology.

Racist robot hating on brown people (dis-proportionally affected by the pandemic).

Patrick says

I wonder if it will ultimately be cheaper than even illegal labor.

They wouldn't be doing this unless it was.

That is pretty freaking cool.

Wonder if there are any side effects - changes in soil composition from the use of this laser.

joshuatrio says

That is pretty freaking cool.

Wonder if there are any side effects - changes in soil composition from the use of this laser.

Well it’s burning the weeds, producing ash and nitrates. But those are good for soil as fertilizer and usually added anyway. I’d say this is a pretty darn green and “organic” technology that could keep toxic roundup pesticides off our food.

What a great invention, get rid of all the weed poison.

Shaman says

Well it’s burning the weeds, producing ash and nitrates. But those are good for soil as fertilizer and usually added anyway. I’d say this is a pretty darn green and “organic” technology that could keep toxic roundup pesticides off our food.

I use butane torch to nuke weeds on my driveway and backyard. Spraying all that pesticide shit gives me heebie-jeebies.

I love the farming innovation. But all this also makes farms the factories.
What we need is small farms and less wastage and grow high nutrition food(not just empty calories in nutrition devoid land) with crop rotation.

There is a revolutionary dish in "Punjab" It is called "saag".
Essentially it is cooking all available greens (primarily mustard plants) into a very protein rich mixtures which can stay in fridge for long time.
I am sure other cultures have same.
What we need is to promote these wholesale ideas from all cultures to make our food chain more wholesome rather than growing feeding empty calories to create a "profit centers" for pharma and medial establishment.
The quality of farming land in US is depleting very quickly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgnXfevdoXY

The fruit taste is US is UN-appeasing at all compared to what in other countries where still farms haven't become factories.
If we fix the food, we get rid of 90% of our medical issues.
This will provide more dollars to local farmers and distributors and less to ag factories,empty calorie food processors and reduce victims to pharma and medical profit centers.

By the way the elites already have their "niche farmers" to produce healthy food for them. I heard somewhere that Fuckerberg kills the animal himself for food.

Powerful lasers alone are like 50,000. I looked for one to cut metal. That will not be cheap for a while, if it’s even real.

This doesn’t sound like a realistic thing

I said I wanted SHARKS WITH LASERS, not tractor trailers!

I think you could do it w/o lasers. Some simple articulating arm, maybe with a small spinning circular saw at the end, could probably reach down and cut the weed off at the dirt level pretty easily. The laser probably hurts the weed more, delaying grow back for longer, but I think as these weeding robots get faster they could just repatrol the same area 1x a wk or whatever. I doubt an arm would be as easy to maneuver as a laser though - it might have trouble getting weeds near or mixed in with the real plant.

Or maybe instead of a saw, just 2 fingers that pinch the weed to grip it, then they spin to pull the weed, or break it. By gripping it first, the video camera could confirm that only the weed is moving, and not the plant, before it proceeds to pull it, allowing it to confirm that its about to kill the desired target.

lasers might be cheaper though.

The farm workers keep using it to re-warm their Starbucks and wearing out the laser mechanism.

Hircus says

. By gripping it first, the video camera could confirm

AI is integrated lately into farm equipments to auto detect the weed.

Blue says

Hircus says

. By gripping it first, the video camera could confirm

AI is integrated lately into farm equipments to auto detect the weed.

I wasnt suggesting it should touch each thing as the primary way to identify weeds. I said the camera could be used to confirm that it has grabbed the correct thing. Camera implies AI. The arm wouldn't even know where to try to grab without the camera info used to give it an approx location.

Even multiple cameras may not be able to see at all angles because plants and weeds will obstruct view of some parts, and so while the arm may grab directly underneath the position that has been identified as a weed, hoping to find the weed stalk there, it could still end up grabbing an intermingled plant. The movement imparted upon the weed an/or plant could be used to help it decide if it grabbed the right thing.

Fortwaynemobile says

Powerful lasers alone are like 50,000. I looked for one to cut metal. That will not be cheap for a while, if it’s even real.

This doesn’t sound like a realistic thing

I doubt they confine it to a single laser.

I often thought an interesting way to assassinate a person is that the entire group assembled in front of the speaker, simply point a laser pointer at the victim.

It doesn't even have to be a laser, it could just be focused light.

It wouldn't be hard to cost reduce this. The trick is the AI part of it and image recognition.

farmer2021 says

There is a revolutionary dish in "Punjab" It is called "saag".

That's interesting @farmer2021

I like "saag paneer" and always assumed saag just meant spinach. But I looked it up (I really like word etymologies) and it's just "vegetable":

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saag

zzyzzx says

Patrick says

I wonder if it will ultimately be cheaper than even illegal labor.

They wouldn't be doing this unless it was.

Good point. Has to be economical or it won't sell. Farmers are very practical people.

So as usual, it's bad for manual labor but good for engineers, programmers, and manufacturers. History has been like that since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Lesson: get an engineering or programming degree

Patrick says

Carbon Robotics

https://carbonrobotics.com/company

Seems to be private, no opportunity to invest in them yet.

Bill Gates is investing in this technology to eliminate 100,000 useless eaters per hour.

farmer2021 says

If we fix the food, we get rid of 90% of our medical issues.

True, but then you have to get people to eat it. American kids (and the adults they grow into) can be VERY picky eaters, refusing to eat their vegetables and bingeing on high carbohydrate foods instead. Then when their bodies give up on them due to malnutrition, they want to just take a pill to deal with it, without putting any thought or effort into changing their diet to correct the actual original problem!

We could start (politically) by ending government subsidies for corn and especially High Fructose Corn Syrup. They produce oceans of that stuff because it’s subsidized, and then they put into absolutely everything to get rid of it. And people often do like a sweet taste. But it’s inflammatory in the arteries and bad for you.

Go to the candy aisle at your supermarket and see just how cheap a bag of candy can be! I saw a TUB of M&Ms at Costco in the 64 oz size. Cost all of about $12. Contains around (140cal/oz)(64oz)=8960Kcal of energy. That’s the equivalent of 11 full size meals (800 kcal) which at market price for a TV dinner ($7.50) of slightly healthier and more balanced food would be $82.50 to get the same calories from actual food.


So poor people do the math instinctively, and know they can eat for much longer with a tub of candy than with even a modicum of nutrition provided by a frozen meal.

And we wonder why the poor in America are fat and unhealthy.

According to the article, the machine costs "hundreds of thousands of dollars" and can weed 15 to 20 acres per day. Also according to the article, a person can weed 1 acre per day.

Let's say you finance the machine at 5% interest and depreciate the machine over 10 years (i.e.: machine needs to be full paid for in 10 years). Let's say $10k/year in maintenance of the machine and $20k/year in diesel fuel. Let's compare that to hiring 15 workers at $15k/year (illegal workers who will work 7 days a week for that $15k — if legal workers then figure 2x or 3x the cost).

Let's (not quite correctly) work out the math for a year:
5% x cost + cost/10 + $10k + $20k = 15 * $15k

So the breakeven machine cost is $1,300,000.

Ceffer says

Bill Gates is investing in this technology to eliminate 100,000 useless eaters per hour.

He says it zaps weeds in fields, but that is just for development and training purposes. Pretty soon it'll be let loose in Democrat-run cities to fix the problem directly.

Ceffer says

Bill Gates is investing in this technology to eliminate 100,000 useless eaters per hour.

It is called Vaccine and will be first tried on Gates loving Hindooos.

True, but then you have to get people to eat it. American kids (and the adults they grow into) can be VERY picky eaters, refusing to eat their vegetables and bingeing on high carbohydrate foods instead

@shaman
Can we troll lefties to do it.. They are good at making even vaccine and painful piercings and whole body tattooing appetizing for kids.

Patrick says

farmer2021 says

There is a revolutionary dish in "Punjab" It is called "saag".

That's interesting @farmer2021

I like "saag paneer" and always assumed saag just meant spinach. But I looked it up (I really like word etymologies) and it's just "vegetable":

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saag

@patrick
This is not real dish. Saag traditionally is made from mustard and have stingy taste, so need to develop a taste for it.(Like it takes time to get used to wasabi.. It is same kind of sting..).
Here is traditional Punjabi food:
Saag, Corn bread , radish/raw onion for extra sting, butter and Lassi(Sugar filled mango Lassi you get at stores is empty calories).
You eat this food Saturday evening and can nap the whole day.. Stronger than any pharma sleep inducers.

Here is more traditional preparation in village. Also note that best food is the food cooked slow.
https://youtu.be/0K1p5vyGTVs