Dorhout's Prospero robot farmer looks somewhat like a mechanical spider, crawling and planting various kinds of seed in ideal locations for that particular crop. (Source: Dorhout R&D LLC)
Fascinating post Cabe. This article is very timely for me because I have just been asked to consider a project that will (hopefully) mechanize the planting of Miscanthus X-- 10,000 acres. Miscanthus is a plant that is used to generate biofuel so food-products can still be used for consumption. I know we are some years away from robotic planting, at least on the scale I need right now, but your article does provide very interesting possibilities. Again, many thanks for the post.
I agree, Jmiller. On corporate farms, a good deal of jobs have been displaced. And it's probably just as well. They were not great jobs for health or for satisfaction.
In a lot of ways so many farming jobs have already been lost due to the size of the machinery and the automation of different tasks. It would be interesting to see how many jobs have already been lost due to technology. At the same time, this technology is increasing the amount of food being grown with less people and less energy.
You do make a good point. Often areas of a crop might be pickable while others are not. And it will take time to develop a way for the robots to differentiate from ready fruit to non ready fruit.
I agree most likely the next steps will be to incorporate current machines with newer technlogies. Right now we see a lot of GPS and mapping of yields and soils types and some use of automation to cntrol vehicles. I don't think it will be long before the tractors will drive themselves.
Thought is the movie The Matrix comes to mind with robotic farming. The bots toiled in fields of their "human-batteries." Upscale the bots, and they will do just that, but with soy-beans.. not the human race.
Good points, Cabe. The displacement of jobs can have a dreary effect. And you're right that even intellectual jobs can be less than exciting. Sometimes I think that writing is manual labor of the mind.
Even though these jobs are soul-crushing. I have to admit, I felt more crushed in many of the engineering jobs I've had. At the time, I fantasized about doing manual labor jobs at those times.
All those printing press people, elevator operators, not all of them recovered. They instead just lost themselves to annals of time. Never to recover. It's a tough world.
Good point, Cabe. Yet it's a long tradition of technology displacing workers. The printing press displaced thousands of scribes. Remember secretaries? Thankfully, in most cases, the jobs that are displaced are mind-numbing and soul-killing.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
0 
