From the inventor of the Roomba:
The Tertill ( not exactly a smooth name) shows what is coming.
Even seemingly complex human tasks like pulling weeds can and will be automated.
It a great example of the idea-economy that is coming:
https://steemit.com/economy/@the-traveller/the-idea-economy-is-coming-are-you-ready
This might seem innocent little toy but for organic farming this can be YUUUGE.
The limiting factor in agriculture is labor costs. If these kinds of devices are competitive in price with pesticide spraying, organic farming just found a game changer. With exponential progress of technology it might become at some point more lucrative NOT to spray pesticides (take that Round-up and Montsanto!)
For farming, chemicals to keep weeds down are a necessity so far to avoid spending too much on labor costs.
They are not intending to lay waste to our environment, it is a cost of doing business.
Now this innocent looking little robot can level the playing field enormously for organic farmers.
Of course cost, mass production, can't buy it yet etc.. yadda yadda yadda let's talk in 5 years...
I love your conclusion:
You say so much in a short sentence :-D
Hehe, people think that technological progress takes a long time, in fact it is on an exponential curve and I think in 5 years developments like this really can give traditional farming a run for their money... People don't realize how high tech farming really is!
Hahah man, I just don't quite understand how it would be able to know the difference between a weed and not a weed!
For the moment it just decapitates everything smaller than 2 inches and leaves the tall stuff alone so obviously the first days of growth you'll still need to weed manually, but for the rest it should leave it alone.
This is the first prototype, I am very sure that in a few years this will get a camera and will do pattern recognition so you can program it to kill everything that's not crop.
Think Skynet for weeds, that's how it will start muahaha!
I did see this thing come up in my FB feed a few days ago. Haha. Still think it's weird. But I think the vacuum things are weird too. Hahah
It's interesting. But what do you do before you have the actual plant you want to grow? That thing will chop of the sprout of your crop also. Anyway, it is probably a good beginning. Interesting solutions are made pretty much everyday and this is just another example of how people won't need to be tech savvy to enjoy the benefits of advanced technology in the future.
Unless of course they don't understand how to turn it on :) hmm...
First gen, cameras and processing power are going to make it possible to do image recognition pretty quickly. But simply deploy when the crop is over 5 cm and problem solved. until then you'll still have to weed the crop fields I guess. But that already needs to be done anyway...
Yeah for sure. Interesting times ahead.
this is nice..... I hope it would be cost effective ...
Then on a lighter mood; you know at the end the bots attacks the humans right? In the moviessss though
I know... Regarding cost effectiveness. Compared to paying humans it will definitely be cost effective. Chemicals though... that is the real thing to beat.
Pretty interesting tiny little robot to be the future of the TERMINATOR of weed. Then again, it all boils down to demand, supply, and cost of robot production.
Hydroponics might be a better way to eliminate the use of soil altogether. No soil, no weed, no robots. Just pure chemicals.