DailyDirt: Robot Farmers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Sep 13th 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Just like any other business-people, farmers face the global economy, armed with technological advances and innovative strategies to target customers. If farmers don't invest in new tools and learning skills like genetics and marketing, they risk falling behind their competition. Robots are already a pretty significant part of modern farming nowadays, and here are just a few interesting links on robots doing our agricultural bidding.

Robots are good at tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous -- so they can be useful for all kinds of farming. Robots are helping dairy farmers to milk cows, and robots can plant and harvest fields -- but human farmers won't be completely replaced just yet. [url]
Flying, lightweight agricultural robots could help monitor crops and spray herbicides more intelligently. Zapping bugs from a remote-controlled quadcopter sounds like it could be a better game than Farmville. [url]
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a robot farm project in a 600 acre that was devastated by a tsunami. Over 59,000 acres farmland were damaged by the earthquake, flooding and nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but robots could help clean up and revive agriculture in northeast Japan. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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Filed Under: agriculture, farming, harvest, herbicides, japan, robots

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Anonymous Coward, 13 Sep 2012 @ 5:15pm

I can see playing that FPS
A FPS game where you're actually shooting at real insects? Kinda sounds like it'd be great for kids who usually like to burn ants with a magnifying glass (but hate to go outside).

Would such a game be rated M for mature cuz it deals with killing things?
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Forest_GS (profile), 13 Sep 2012 @ 5:16pm

What is truly needed is genetically engineered crops that can grow on the ocean. Pollination could be handled by autonomous insect robots. Who cares if GE crops increase chances of cancer .01%, it will practically solve world hunger.
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Avarage smoe, 13 Sep 2012 @ 5:19pm

funny I just mentioned robots in another thread. Clearly ho fawns over my every word and uses time machines
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Sep 2012 @ 5:22pm

Maybe robots could be used to grow corn near Chernobyl, as well. As long as they eat it too.
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abc gum, 13 Sep 2012 @ 6:40pm

I would be awesome if the robot farmers were programmed to not plant crops down stream from a feed lot, this would make them much better than their human counterparts.
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Beta (profile), 14 Sep 2012 @ 7:59am

detente
So they run the farms and we run the oil rigs. I guess that will keep us on friendly terms.
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