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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I think the worry is that with 1,000 drones, if you have 10 breaking daily, that's probably a full-time job for someone to be repairing them, especially if they have to go out retrieving them.

One big tractor isn't a full-time job's worth of maintenance.

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I guess I don't really understand your assumptions. Why would 1 massive machine capable of doing all the various tasks of managing this farm require less maintenance than 1000 presumably much simpler, smaller machines? Assuming other things besides mobility break, I don't think retrieval would be much more of an issue, or that we'd have reason to expect the failure rate to be higher for each smaller, simpler drone than for the giant, super-complex one. To get the same work done, the behemoth would have to move much faster, have many more specialize tools and sensors all in the same rig, and would not be swappable for regular maintenance without pausing the entire workflow. Small drones could go back to base in shifts (again with some margin of extra drones) so that there are always 1000 actively working.

I did not assume the smaller drones would be simpler than the tractor. In fact I'd expect them to be similarly if not more complex.

More complex for sure. If you watched the video, there's still a tractor. And instead of a simple plastic tank, it hauls a shitton of electronics.

Now, the video is shot in a shiny nice weather day. Now imagine how would it perform if it's raining since last Tuesday.

To be clear: we were talking about a "food forest," not the kind of row-based farm tractor in the video. I certainly agree that the kind of tractor in the video is simpler than the swarm units would be. But a giant tractor that can navigate a forest is a different matter entirely, no?

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