Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

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One of the first stories I did as a freelancer, back in the early 80s, was about radio tracking collars being used on cows so that farmers could manage the herd better.

So this is something in the robotics field that has been long-coming. If you'd like to get an idea of what the future holds for people, take a look at cows, a creature that has a lot of financial value. The idea is that the cow is tagged to be uniquely identified, when the cow approaches a service center, for say salt or food, the system reads the ID and delivers an appropriate form of nourishment. When the cow is uncomfortable due to lack of milking, the system milks the cow. Next up, I'm sure, will be automated detection of sick cows along with some basic veterinary interdiction. Finally it would be very easy to add a little bit of behavioral control to the system, either a mild shock, a noise, or some other stimulus to gently train the animal over time. I could even imagine a farm without fences, managed completely by robots and conditioned cows. The cows are happy, the people are happy.

Pretty cool. Also a bit unnerving.

I don't think there needs to be a robot revolt. I think over a few centuries they'll just slowly manage us into extinction, where we will most likely belong.

>I don't think there needs to be a robot revolt. I think over a few centuries they'll just slowly manage us into extinction, where we will most likely belong.

Obligatory link to Manna (sci-fi story about robots and bots impact on humans) - http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

There's already a prototype robot that brings cows in to be milked http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24955943

Once driverless cars are perfected, driverless tractors will be right there with them too, they will be hugely popular.

A tractor can make a lot more assumptions about its environment than a car can, and things like field topography/row direction can be programmed once and then just replayed. Automating them should be relatively simple (and it looks like it is being done [0]). I think the necessary algorithmic/sensor complexity is probably closer to a Roomba than a Google car.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor

I have it on good authority that driverless tractors are either already a reality, or very close to it.

If you think about it, driverless tractors are a much easier problem than driving a car.

Yes, although in Ireland at least, it's common for farms to be split up and require a lot of driving on public roads.

"There's already a prototype robot that brings cows in to be milked"

Long-term, that is a dead end. The thing is, you don't have to bring in your cows, and certainly not all at the same time, if you have a milking robot. They will come in by themselves if they want to be milked.

Also, I find it curious that this is news. Milking robots have been used for decades (since the early 1990's)

Economically, we have about reached the point where the robot is economically feasible (a robot increases milk production, but costs money, both in investments and in electricity. It's not a given that the increase in milk production pays for the extra costs)

Farmers (here in the UK) have been pretty good jumping on technology, they have sophisticated navigation software, probes they use to assess crops before and during harvesting (down to which part to harvest with first).

Where I live they grow a lot of pea's and the period between "ready to harvest" and "pig food" is pretty short, it's a spectacular sight at night watching them go up and down the hills near here in the dark (always reminds me of War of the Worlds as they have rotating spotlights) harvesting.

I can't speak from experience, but driving a tractor on the field has an entirely different set of challenges compared to your regular car trip.

"Driverless" tractors have been around for quite a while. Most large ag operations have very little human input when they're planting and harvesting.

Driverless tractors are already in use - http://www.asirobots.com/farming/

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