These May Be The Droids Farmers Are Looking For | Hacker News Reader

These May Be The Droids Farmers Are Looking For

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81 pointsevo_920 comments

There's something very refreshing to read about a startup that isn't in software. Not to say there's anything wrong with software, but I--like a lot of HN readers, especially in the Bay Area--tend to hear orders of magnitude more news about web apps than robots.

The really exciting thing, of course, is that there are CS techniques and ideas that can be applied to both: machine learning springs to mind immediately. Robotics and web programming aren't entirely dissimilar which is exciting--if I get bored of what I'm doing now, I could reasonably go into robotics or several other seemingly unrelated fields.

I 100% agree. We read about so many Crowd-Sourced-Cloud-Based Social Location-aware ridiculous web apps that spring up every day that allow you to "throw a sheep" at your friends that it's getting a little ridiculous. That's why people keep shouting "bubble!!!" -- because we aren't really solving any true problems.

If these droids were upgraded to water, move, feed, and monitor plant health, it would be a huge revolution to the industry and actually _increase the efficiency_ of a necessary industry.

It makes me a little sick to see Color getting 41 million, Shaker getting 15 million, and this great startup gets 5. Priorities people...

The great thing, and also the terrible thing, about web apps is that they're universal. Make an app somewhere and anybody with a computer can get at it, usually without paying very much. It's a great opportunity for people to make things. It's also a shame, because most web apps encourage people to spend more time in front of a computer (instead of helping them take care of business more quickly than they would otherwise, so they can close the computer and get back to everything else), and because as wonderful as computers are, they're limited in their impact on the physical world.

Further complicating the matter are advertisers, who are still desperately seeking the next frontier once print and television ads die. Advertisers like web apps, because web apps have lots of users, and that means lots of potential targets. Robots? Not much advertising potential.

Actually there is a lot of software in that robot.

That is what I meant to say in my second paragraph, but I wasn't very clear. Basically, the startup in question is different from the normal Bay Area/Hacker News fare, but still close enough that I could imagine working for them if I got bored of what I'm doing now.

I would have been much less excited to read about a company that did not have any software at all.

I predict the world will undergo an enormous robot revolution at some point. Things like highway maintenance, garden cultivation, cutting trees that leer over powerlines, self-driving cars, painting, home assistants (mixed with Siri technology)... it will certainly outshine things like the hippest Twitter clients.

This is a great step in the right direction, but I'm really hoping to read more about robots that do things I care about. Like reduce the cost of food. I'm not really in the market for ornamental shrubs right now. I'm really getting impatient waiting for my humanoid butler to go on sale.

I haven't ever worked in a nursery but it looks like they're just moving plants around from one group to another five feet away. Is that the actual use case, or will they be moving the plants longer distances?

Clearly people who work in nurseries do more than move plants back and forth 5 feet away, but this is an interesting step in the right direction. When I worked in a nursery in high school I had 2 primary tasks a) keep the plants watered b) help customers load their cars with big items. I've read about projects that use water sensors to enable plants to request water individually as they get dry. Adding a water tank and a sprayer to these little robots might be an interesting addition if it isn't cost prohibitive. I look forward to seeing more applications of technology in agriculture.

I can't wait to see produce that is organically farmed by robots.

A lot of the food already pretty much is. Modern production tractors and implements have the technology to operate without much human intervention; only really relying on an operator to monitor that all is well with the system. We have robots to milk cows, collect eggs, you name it.

The technology improves each year, but robots are nothing new to agriculture. Farmers started experimenting with this technology as far back as the 80s and it has only become more pervasive since.

It'll be interesting if there will be a new super organic which means nothing artificial involved.

Robots don't have the same fundamental problems as pesticides.

That doesn't mean that marketing types won't try to convince people with more money than sense that hand-harvested produce is somehow superior to robot-harvested produce. Even if nobody believes that BS, some wealthy people will pay more for something just because the knowledge that most people can't afford it makes them feel more exclusive.

that's really cool, and it's nice for manual labor to be aided by some automated help, though dare to say, precursor to wall-e anyone?

Combine this with Farmeron and you have a winner.

I couldn't help but think of the first 'action' scene in this hilariously bad Tom Selleck movie, which involves a runaway harvesting robot: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

(That will only be of interest to HNers if you get a kick out of watching wildly inaccurate futurist visions. And Gene Simmons.)

I think Silent Running is the more apt film choice here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running

funnier yet are the over weight people standing on the side watching.

I bet building robots that appreciate and buy those plants will be the market of the future.

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