The farming robots of tomorrow are here today | The Future IRL
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ส.ค. 2017
- Robot farming machines are already doing the dirty work in more fields than people may realize.
Subscribe to Engadget on TH-cam: engt.co/subscribe
Get More Engadget:
• Like us on Facebook: / engadget
• Follow us on Twitter: / engadget
• Follow us on Instagram: / engadget
• Add us on Snapchat: / engadgethq
• Read more: www.engadget.com
Engadget is the definitive guide to this connected life. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![Robots And AI: The Future Is Automated And Every Job Is At Risk [Automation, Pt. 1] | AJ+ Docs](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rnBAdnNIIXk/mqdefault.jpg)
![Robots And AI: The Future Is Automated And Every Job Is At Risk [Automation, Pt. 1] | AJ+ Docs](/img/tr.png)
They call them farm bots but they missed a pun. They should’ve called them Robotanist
Your post is quite appreciable. Quality content, indeed.
THATS AWESOME NAME!
agreed lulz
Lol
MVP
As a vegetable grower, all I can say is that small local farms are the solution for fresh produce... These technologies only discourage new farmers to join in as they need millions of capital to be productive. I started my organic farm with ~20k and I sell my produce the same price as conventional poison food.
yeh & that's where the REAL problems in the industry lie! Those without the money for expensive certification being pushed out of the market by unfair regulations. I don't know what the answer is, but there needs to be one & consumers need to actually listen & get involved in resolving this! It's in our interests too, not just the interests of the farmers!
If they have a machine that can selectively spray herbicide on weeds, you'd think it'd be more cost effective to fit it with a knife to just remove the plant so there's no need to buy and use herbicides.
Its often not enough just to cut the weed
@@raventree7707 Sometimes, cutting the weed only excites the roots to create more growth in its survival. Weed removal altogether is the answer but not with chemicals as the chemicals eventually have a residual effect on the soil.
@@oby-1607 yes exactly
Still supportive of monocultures and not treating the soil as a living biota. We need polyculture with less synthetic inputs. The future of sustainable farming is a reintegration of older human knowledge not a further disconnect.
its both
Exactly!
Great video! I would love to see a series on automation and different industries.
Nice!
Also love the longer video :-)
They should make a robot that pulls weeds out that would be alot more cleaner.
release natural predators onto the insects eg ladybirds onto aphids. There's a few of these types of predators that can be released as eggs & that are currently being trialed in release from drones, but that machine could release them into a FAR more precise location, for far better survival rates
fungus is also better controlled if the main outbreak is cut off before chemically treating the residue, or returning a few times to remove the rest of the residue
Daisy Perez What if you try to “make that robot” instead of waiting somebody else to make it.
Nano robot to chase and kill insects
It's all moving so fast, really incredible
not really, this has been going on for a long time
At the tail end the gentleman said something that I had hoped folks would learn not to say. He said.. "Never".
In the age we are in now I feel that we need to be very careful with our application of that word. In his case, I can imagine a time where a 4 humanoid robot that were programmed to pick crops would be delivered by autonomous vehicle to his small farm. The robots would then work his farm for 8-12 hrs and leave the produce in bins or in a cooling shed. These robots would work quietly even through a rainy night, recharging at the vehicle if needed. When done they would couple to the vehicle and drive to take a charge and then on to their next assignment.
So I would caution folks to be very careful with the word.. "Never".
Still need to fight food waste, cause damn its underestimated
1.3 billion tonnes into landfill every year! A shipping container is 4-8 tonnes so yeh, HUGE problem!!!!!!!! & so much of it avoidable with "Cosmetic standards" etc & a lot of that is just plowed back into the ground, not even included in those landfill numbers!
Send it to Africa lmao
food waste by the wars between nationals and multinationals supermarkets + increasing population + increasing price of oil and energy + global warming, pollution, climate change = doom !
@@Danuxsy In Africa, they'll breed until the day they reach the Moon...
You call it waste but, the important thing for the farmer and the supermarket is that you buy it, if you want to let it rot in your refrigerator that is actually a plus not a minus (as far sales are concerned).
The only people who didn't know about this are people who live in cities. Anybody who lives where crops are grown already knows that it's 90% robots/machines & 10% people doing these jobs.
70% of the food in the world is grown by small land holders.
That may or may not be globally true, Joe, but it is certainly not true in the North-Western United States, & I'd venture to say, across most of the developed world.
Also, yes, Blado, I am the internet & the internet is me.
My area (New England) is similar. Lots of our best land is being destroyed by mechanization. In many places the United States has lost half it's topsoil since colonization. We lose so much topsoil every year that my state pays for helicopters to drop cover crop seed on many large fields in my area since the owners, and leasers, don't care about anything but their bank accounts, and wont take care of our land themselves. I know, however, that most of the world doesn't have access to the kind of subsidies and equipment that make american "traditional agriculture" possible, and the big guys are on feaking welfare to get by. Small and less mechanized is profitable though. We don't get subsidies, but we can still have a profit margin many times greater than any conventional farmers, and our food is higher quality. I know of a guy a town over who's less than ten acre organic farm grossed a bit over one hundred thousand dollars last year. Most of that is profit since he runs close to no machinery, and employs only a few people. I've heard larger scale farmers say five thousand dollars of net income per acre is what they hope for on a good year. I believe more people should get into local food production. It's a wonderful, viable, and intellectually and physically challenging way to live.
Joe the worldwide figures I've heard on soil are 10 tonnes lost per person per year (with only 1/2 a tonne of produce per person harvested for that 10 tonne soil loss) & then of coruse there's the 1/3rd of arable land destroyed in teh last 40 years due to chemical fertilisers :( very sad the direction thw world's going/gone, but there certainly is some hope on the horizen too. A lot of people are starting to wake up & demand improvements, lets just hope even more do!
& thanks for your insights! I'm in another country & in the city, so wasn't aware of the stuff you speak off, scary really (but we all need to know if we're going to do anything to change it)
Harvest jobs are tough jobs, but if we lose all the manual labor jobs in farming it leaves a group of people who's ancestors have been farming since the invention of agriculture, and have real expertise in doing seemingly simple manual labor jobs, as efficiently, and ergonomically as possible, but own no land shit out of luck. If you think harvest work is unskilled go watch it happen. A good crew harvesting watermelons is pretty amazing. There's videos. We can produce food by hand efficiently, or we wouldn't be here in such great numbers. The future of farming isn't only gleaming stainless steel and silicone. We don't necessarily have to feed the mathematically projected billions by 2050. It probably wont happen. We can hardly even predict the weather accurately.
Awesome technology but I still think the future of farming is vertical indoor farming with no dirt, herbicides, or pesticides needed specially in leafy greens growing.
The automation is likely easier in such a controlled environment but why should the media matter too much.
I couldn't agree more. This would bring water usage/loss way down and allow control of the environment. As Ti said, the automation would also be easier in such a controlled area. As far as the media, dirt, hydroponics or aeroponics would all work well.
What excites me most after the sheer volume of clean food, (and potentially home for bees) is the climate control, allowing things like rubber and cocoa to be grown in North America. Gros michel bananas and other, "exotic" fruits/veges would not need to travel thousands of miles. I believe in local food and power and the culling of unnecessary jobs.
Land is still cheap enough. Transportation is still cheap enough. Open field farming will remain with us for a long time yet.
If the economics flip, that somehow a vertical acre of building, artificial lighting and climate control becomes less expensive then, yes, vertical farming will become the norm. For now I just can't see how an acre of artificial lighting is ever going to be cheaper than free natural sunlight.
Keep in mind that the building you need for vertical farming will have to compete economically with housing. If you buy an acre of city property you have to run the numbers... housing is going to make you a good 100 times more revenue than farming.
David Lopez I agree!
lol did some of you people seriously watch this video showing the size of agriculture & figure you could (and should) move all of that indoors? Come on!
Such a good video!
I like her joky style, her sense of humor:))
good reporting
Sounds good! Bring it on! + but I too, still think another promising future of farming is vertical indoor farming with no dirt, herbicides, or pesticides needed, but will need a good supply of energy for the indoor climate & lighting. Modular units would be ideal for smaller, more localized production. All good stuff! Very cool indeed!
agreed
I wonder if they will make robots which can harvest permaculture farms some day? The assumption being that those robots would make permaculture commercially viable.
A mix of 4 things will happen due to automation in the future.
People will start working less every week and companies will be forced to pay them more in return.
People will lose "Real jobs" and start working dumb jobs that are niche and wierd just to have something to do.
People will be paid basic income from the government and start collecting themselves into quasi commune like groups.
Some other people being paid basic income will lock themselves in their rooms and live on Virtual reality.
Then the Technological Singularity will happen and all bets are off after that.
Good presentation Kerry Davis
If the robot stays on top of its duties every day it can laser the weeds out before they grow too big. A flying drone could take care of that duty... gonna need a bigger battery pack. And get rid of huge tractors. Design small tractors without riders. If a farmer wanted to steer he could do it from his recliner at home, or allow the A.I. to do all the work. That would compact the soil less and be better for growing.
Love the random cut to what looks like a British farm at 3:15
We need a laser robot that targets bugs. In a split second it can acquire, identify, and zap a bug. A laser with a cone shaped focusing mechanism can target a very small area as well as short depth of field, so it wont damage what you want to keep. Like plants or good bugs. It’ll just quietly roam your garden, looking around and under, killing. Fulfilling its purpose as any good robot.
this is very cool
Even better than robots that spray herbicide on weeds is robots that pull the weeds and don't use any chemicals.
Targeting just the weeds with insecticide is great. But the ultimate is physically killing them. And physically killing bugs before they can do damage.
We'll want the same thing happening in the walls and floors of our houses.
Robots will eventually be cheap enough to stand guard duty over every plant. And when the time is right for harvest, the robot that makes that judgement will call the harvesting robot.
The coolest thing about this is it can all happen on your roof or the side of a building. Harvest can happen in time for dinner or in time to send it to market autonomously.
Why have food markets when there's no scarcity fam.
This is awesome. A big step towards solving world hunger.
Eventually no humans needed except to eat the products.
There will be robots for that too
This is why there is a sudden focus on illegal immigration. Prior to these tools becoming a possible reality, corporate agriculture lobbyists encouraged government to look the other way.....providing cheap labor to the industry as well as keeping prices down for the consumer or widening the profit margin.
maintenance will probably still be humans.
Freedom Dividend is needed. Robots will only concentrate wealth to less than 1% population. Regular working class will become poorer!
Andrew Yang is the only Dem President talking about issues on Automation: pro and cons and the solutions to the social problems.
instead of pesticide, they should go one step up: just spray boiling water on the weed. it works even better, zero pollution, low cost. And / or destroy it mechanically too
It's not hard to fill farm labor vacancies. It's not hard to fill any employment vacancy. Any time someone tries to tell you that it is, it just means the employers are unwilling to pay a fair wage.
Can we get a new update love your work mate!!
All a bunch of crap that costs millions & destroy millions of jobs. Wish none of them ever worked for those greedy selfish cold hearted farmers. Shameful!
My first response to this was "why use pesticides?" Once you're paying attention to individual plants, there must be multiple ways of controlling weeds that can be tested and that won't be as damaging to the environment or resource-intensive as herbicide. How about steam, water jets or microwaves as a starting point? I'm not an engineer or farmer, but I know that as a general principle you don't know till you try.
Why spray the weeds ? Why not just have a robotic hand pull the weeds out , no dangerous / expensive chemicals required .
Perhaps robotics and big data could reduce or replace monoculture farming I'm thinking along the lines selecting which crop to plant at that location of a field from a diverse pool of appropriate plants to best enrich the land and reduce need of supplements. Plot size etc. would need to be optimized in some fashion.
Next evolution should be autonomous permaculture robots to produce monoculture quantities without pesticides and herbicides. The following generation should completely recycle all waste disposals.
How about even some basics to help permaculture people, like commercialisation of seeding machines to sow in "pasture cropping" or mobile shade platforms that move around animal paddocks every hour or 2, in order to move the animals & where they deposit their manure (I think it was Joel Salatin I heard suggesting that one)
"Next evolution should be autonomous permaculture robots" ...did you just learn the word "permaculture" and decided to use it in a sentence to show off? That's not how "permaculture" is used. Permaculture is a noun, not an adjective. It's not...and NEVER... a "permaculture robot".
Hanson Robotics is working on an agricultural application that can identify different types of crop diseases. It will one day be able to analyze pictures of diseased leaves, and determine a specific solution for dealing with the problem.
Limiting the overuse of dangerous chemicals.
I love the idea of getting the use of chemicals reduced.
Robots use way less diesel and hydraulic fluids and toxic lithium ion batteries than humans. Chemicals are fertilizer, pesticides ,herbicides, disinfectants. I miss the part where they said they don't have to use as many chemicals.
The benefit of a robot is it can spray pesticides at levels that would kill a human applying the products to plants.
Awesome!! This the future of Humanity!
GOOD, the fewer Foreign laborers we need, the less trouble, crime, handouts, etc we will have. THIS is what the investors should be supporting. It will make our country safer.
why is it that whenever they show trump supporters in manufacturing plants that are being closed down, they are always disproportionately white men? It's not the foreigners that will be impacted by this! but I guess that claim gives you a scapegoat for a few more years until you have no more excuses & need to look at the truth
Please don't scroll down, just watch the damn video. So many experts under me.
I'm an organic farmer and permaculturalist in Byron Bay Australia. This is the first imagery of robots farming I've seen and its giving me chills. Before becoming interested in farming, environmentalism and sustainability I had been a tech head my whole life, building and fixing computers for enjoyment.. almost entirely self-taught. I always believed AI would become larger than life and in these past few years I've seen it to be coming true. 10-20yrs from now the advances will be astronomical, 30-50yrs more and I feel we could be obsolete altogether, I think we aught to tread carefully.
The real state of the art will come with controlled growing environments. It's not out of the question that we'll see smallish greenhouses with robots, climate control and their own processing and storage facilities that will be more productive than rain forest environments in terms of biomass production, of which nearly 100% will be edible and processed into very good food. I mean even the roots of most plants we eat are nutritious and could be processed into perfectly good food.
Take a greenhouse, employ aeroponics, add sensors to monitor the water and air. Have a single, or several robots meticulously attending to each and every plant and pest. Allow that a good number of insects especially are beneficial to plants and keep their numbers at a good level for them to do their work. The robots can use low powered lasers to kill unwanted insects and plants - So zero chemicals apart from plant nutrients. Using blue and red led lights the plants can get all the light spectrum chlorophyll can make use of and even the day night cycle can be adapted for maximum productivity. Even the atmosphere in such greenhouses can be tweaked for maximum productivity. Nothing wasted. Every plant grown can be automatically nurtured and every usable part, harvested, cleaned, processed and either stored, or packaged for fresh consumption and dispatched. Meticulously, 24/7. What's is not desirable to eat for people, might be processed into perfectly good fish food which if included in such a system could provide nutrients back to the plants and themselves be harvested for food. Robots could even, again meticulously, select plant lines with the very best characteristics.
Some labs around the world are working on systems like this, but it's early days, and still far from the sophistication I am suggesting. With better robotics and neural networks wonders can be achieved. Not ever could people grow food better than such systems will. For me it is the type of technology both society in general and space exploration can benefit from. I honestly wish I could work on developing such systems.
The problem with such systems is that they will need to become cheap enough (and sustainable) in terms of construction, hardware, and upkeep. So far it just hasn't proven more economical per unit of product sold than simply sowing and mass harvesting giant monocrop open air fields. In Iceland, sure. In a giant, fertile, temperate zone like the States, no.
Yeah we are not there yet, but it's worth investing in the R&D while the going is good. At some point the ecological cost of giant mono-culture farming will start being reckoned in. It will eventually simply have to. It's already causing soil degradation, desertification and oceanic dead zones on a grand scale.
It will not be a popular move... I can understand that. It's probably not within this century, but it will happen eventually. Thus far we've operated in a state of oblivious innocence really. We'll have to give reality it's due at some point.
In next years mold will destroy most of crops believe me...because of Grand Solar Minimum
6:30 instead of spraying each weed individually with herbicide just cut it or dig it!
For every robot now doing a job previously performed by a human, you've an unemployed human, or customer. Robots don't go home to a family with groceries.
Maybe they’ll finally make a Reporter replacement robot.
My dad owns a couple hundred acres up North. He has vacation house there and leases most of the land for farming. Makes a nice chunk of passive income on it. That's the extent of my knowledge on farming.
vertical farming is much too labor intensive.
it is too energy intensive.
aquaponics with sunlight and greenhouses offers the best of both worlds.
the fish offer the nutrition to the plants
the water regenerates life to both the fish and the plants
and in places like calif where water is scarce and expensive, the ultra low water use makes sense
Fully automated farms is the future.
But we already have a farming robot, his name is 'Pedro'
Moral of the story, Buy a land or property for growing crops and animals or learning practical high tech skills
Land will be the main factor in wealth in the future. Machines will do all the work.
knowing how to fix computers and machinery will also be important, the doctors of the machine's of the future
yea, that's practical high tech skills.
Robert Singer don't bet on that. Farming will be a lost knowledge
Naw there's always gonna be hippies, farm hipsters and survivalists.
Every piece of equipment with meshing cogs is now called a "robot." I have robotic toenail clippers. Life is so good since the robots took over.
In my family most stayed in farming . Mostly science and engineering(soil science and “robotics”). We’re somewhat typical.Its not as if everyone is leaving.Many want to stay and are doing so with good prospects .
You can grow more, faster, year round, without any herbicides or pesticides, with hydroponic farming.
It would take fewer warehouses than fields to grow the same amount of food.
Yeah but it can be vertical
Ask yourself where the fish food comes from and when you get educated in that, you will find that kind of farming is no better.
Make me tempted to try farming. Canada is blessed with a very large land surface, low population, low birthrate and lot of new reclaimed lands from the artic ices.
We NEVER used any insecticide in our village.
We always had fresh and healthy food.
unfortunately lettuce is NOT the vegetable of tomorrow.
BRT is doing a lot more than lettuce.. I worked with it first hand this year.
More researches and investments should be done on Vertical Farming as well.
this is for Blueriver tech, instead of ur robot finding & spraying weedicide, why dont the robot cut down the weed coz it will become a organic matter for the soil and it will provide the nutrients. By this way, there is no need for chemistry.
Well, if they are here today, then, they are the farming robots of today. Just saying
They showed up earlier and ate all of the porridge Mama Bear had prepared for the whole week. Sad, isn't it? :,(
Economy stagnet just after 9 bil and then permaculture natural organic human raised foods be the purpose of more people then evr before. Farm fairs and contests will be the new Olympics. Quality like in Beef Bulls. Artisan Farming
80% robotics , 20% humans ......it's gonna be hard time to look for a job in the future.....
Instead of robots for farmer's that have way to much land and are rubbish at growing plants, why not do competition give an acre to each person that can grow plants give them 3 years and who ever grows the most gets to keep the land and get more land and have the runner-up's work and learn from the winner's!
Running out of excuses not to build that wall. Some will be triggered. California used to beat Australia in selling olives since they had no source of cheap labor. Australia automated and now has a lower price on their olives.
yeh we do, because we actually have an education system & prioritise education & work, instead of whinging & attacking each other. The wall's not your problem, you attitude is!
Cue joke about opening scene of Runaway. Ok, yes, I'm old.
Dey took our Jeerbs. Now the robots takkin der jeeerbs. LOL
BOON LOGIC has the fastest pattern finding software module now in the world for imaging, AI/ Machine Learning on Steriods
Again, the world population is 9 billion right now, and growing at 100m to 115m per year, so it will be 9.6 billion in 2025, and 10 billion in 2028, not 2050!
Big difference!
It is possible only for large scale farmers
I feel like what's going to happen is that weeds are going to evolve to look like the crops you're growing. In fact I think that's how oatmeal evolved into its present form.
It's kind of funny, I was just thinking why this type of technology hasn't been employed already in the agricultural industry and lo and behold , here it is in practical service. And more importantly, the technology provides real value and cost savings.
Leave the industrial scale farming to the robots, but leave my tomatoes alone!
This lady is just so charming
No threat here, it’s what they do with it afterwards.
maybe we could have robots harvest and plant a variety of crops in the same fields creating a much healthier bio diversity than traditional mono cropping!!
Marijuana Bot!
I think I am going to create a Startup for
Marijuana Robots.
I am going to call it
Sky High Net.
10million pictures? Those are rookie numbers! You gotta pump those numbers up! You’re nowhere near big data.
I don't think you understand how machine learning works.. I work directly with Blue River, albeit not in that department, and you couldn't be more wrong
Instead of spraying a chemical on the weed, just use a robot arm to remove it and toss them into a container. It achieves two benefits, verification of weeds killed vs crop, and less expense on chemicals.
why can't the robots just cut the bad plants down at the roots rather than spray them
Kerry Davis is PAWG!
This is the end of normal, labourers, and farming, don't forget what happened when the combined harvester and thresher machine, got invented a dromatic drop in the need for people to work the fields of the land of the owners ! and more profit but in the long run cheaper food for everyone and the ability to produce more and feed more people . This means that most of the food we will eat, in the future will be cleaner and and more healthy with less chemicals and her besides.
yay more people can be fed! Throw away those birth control pills now, no longer needed
Science becomes art
From one alien to the next.
Very exciting! Besides saving chemical use, reducing run off pollutants, and selective harvesting, this coupled with the corn starch nitrogen infused bacteria going on in Sweden, all of this tech can be boxed and sent to hard to grow regions. Starvation will be dramatically reduced if not eventually eliminated! AWESOME!
We won't be starving anytime soon
"HIGHER WAGES"!!! 😂😂😂😂😂
If we can do this in large scale we can even create a free food society!
only question is if we'll get UBI anytime soon..
Haha oh you youngster nothing is free in this world big companies are gona find a way to make more money.
. . . _Treadwell_
But will these machines run on Burritos?
well.... if a bot can see and spray,.... IT SHOULD BE ABLE TO PULL THAT WEED... AND VACUUM UP EVERY PEST.
NO ?
No . XD
Well, what about pesticides ? Are they gone to in the future ? That would make be eat more greens
Limited space vs unlimited technology
cool , dont even need a wall with robotic agriculture
AI and machine learning is a blessing. Maybe it gets here just in time to redesign EVERYTHING, to prevent everything go up in flames
for the walnut harvester. Why not have a simple track that is literally just a colored line and markers for each tree in the row of crops. Then, teach the computer to follow the colored track and stop accordingly (at the markers). Basic autonomy solved!
It is great that we could use the technology to increase the efficiency for producing food that good for the environment and humanity. But that technology is still not being affordable for developing country that could waste the majority of the land.
hydroponics is the future let the ground recover
Ticky Tocky hydroponics uses 80% less water and loses none to evaporation.
Theeey tooook ourh job!
Still spays chemicals on your fields and gets into the roots to the plants.
Robots will make our food more cleaner and greener. We can be happy about that !
*Hooray for less chemicals on farms !*
It showed a robot dispensing one "-cide" or another... The host(ess) proudly exclaims that, "Tracmap lets farmers check in on whether the right fields were treated." Yippie!
(i.e., it's not all good.)
IIUC, it is better than today, because today they also spray herbicides, and they do it a lot more indiscriminately
Very good science-fiction! Underrated comment @nateman10
No. Engineers will make our food more cleaner and greener.
Keep engineers, especially those of the genetic kind, away from my food, thank you (very much).
Pigweed is Amaranth grain producer- why not cultivate it? I saw it Identified for eradication in the program!!!!!