Robot weed killers could create a sustainable future for agriculture | The Optimist Daily
Robot weed killers could create a sustainable future for agriculture | The Optimist Daily
How autonomous technology can revolutionize agriculture.
Herbicides have a long history of negative consequences. Glyphosate and paraquat, among other pollutants, are extremely harmful to human health and the environment. These pollutants impair soil quality and destroy beneficial organisms such as pollinators. Furthermore, the widespread use of herbicides has resulted in weed resistance, making chemical management less effective.
Kenny Lee, co-founder and CEO of Aigen Robotics, is personally committed to reducing pesticide use. Lee, a glyphosate-related non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, has collected $19 million for his startup to produce solar-powered weeding robots. “We’re on a personal mission,” Lee says, emphasizing their dedication to sustainable agriculture.
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Doesn't hydroponic farming already solve the weed problem without herbicides?
Hydroponics doesn't scale in the way that traditional "stick a seed in the ground and leave for months at a time" scales, regardless of if you are doing it organic or not. This is also not the first "robot that will solve" agriculture. There is a mentality in silicon valley that they are smarter than everyone and just no one else has thought of these things. But this idea in principal has been around forever, and I even saw some demos at experimental stations I was working at back in the early Obama years. Pretty sure none of that went anywhere, but then again, robotics have gotten cheaper, etc.
The two best tech's I've seen in this particular space were 1, basically a small hydraulic ram that beat the ever living piss out of small seedlings, and two, a high powered laser that smote small weed seedlings with the power of science. Either way, the places I've seen this work, its only on demonstration scale; very contrived circumstances; and always on extremely young weed seedlings. There also almost always seems to be a bit of cheating around the particular weed species. Consider the computer vision aspect: you need to destroy the seedling when its very young; many crops have weeds that are closely related and indistinguishable at that stage. So you'll see demonstrations where its a dicot weed species in a grass species crop or vise-servus (or like, cheat grass in rapeseed, or some brassica in wheat).
But yeah. Inevitably it ends up being other issues that derail this. Small robots need to be kept track of, powered, etc. They get mud in their tracks. Birds shit on them. Crackheads steal them all and sells them for parts. They fall over sideways. And like, yeah you could build them bigger and heavier, but then you've just reinvented the tractor.
If it's a laser, then technically you're supposed to specify that it's "concentrated science" just FYI
Aquaponics also. I would really like to see greater investment in that field.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think you can grow all plants in hydroponics. For example, anything that grows on trees(large root systems) as well as grain crops (where you need a lot of plants together, rather in individual pods like in most hydroponics).
The only alternative I can think of is a greenhouse system. Like what indoor botanical gardens use for trees, but instead designed for farming. That would be expensive(more than farmers could afford), but it would also weather-protect crops.
But you are right about hydroponics or aquaponics for a lot of produce, though!
Weeds aren't a problem, but typically the fertilizers for hydro are petroleum based, and therefore not sustainable.
Isn't this the case for most of the ammonia based fertilizer used in all types of farming?
Yes it is. Haber-Bosch process is where all our ammonia comes from, and it's fed via petrochemical stocks. No oil = no food.
HB really requires hydrogen, which typically comes from fossil fuels. However, with some policy changes the hydrogen for ammonia production could come from GHG free sources instead.
You are right. However, with policy changes, we also need a tenable plan for a hydrogen economy that is physically and economically possible. The tech to produce and handle hydrogen on that scale does not exist, and much like carbon capture and storage, they are likely to remain a pipe dream; numbers don't add up. We've spent a century building infrastructure that has no use other than extracting and processing fossil fuels. That we have enough resources to make the transition to a clean economy is in serious doubt at this time.
It does make a nice talking point to make everyone feel better about technology saving us from ourselves in the future, though. It's certainly much more palatable than talking about the overshoot of the human population.