I’m all for the physical and mental labor distinction fading away over time, but I have the feeling that a humanoid robot is a really inefficient way of solving this with robotics. Like isn’t this exactly part of what a modern tractor does?
If anything, you could find a way to get these giant mfs to drive on their own with some remote instructions maybe, but I guess that doesn’t scratch some people’s itch of owning humans and having them harvest wheat one by one
Advanced farm machinery is semi-autonomous right now. It’s really really cool and also a critical point of tension in capitalism as the needs of farmers, ag megacorps, heavy industry firms, and people who eat food are all pulling in different directions.
While I’m a pretty heavy autonomous cars skeptic, autonomous farm machinery is much more reasonable and much closer.
There’s a few companies already producing test combine harvesters for example and there’s been at least one farm here in the UK which is staffed by researchers working to make it 100% autonomous, with quite a bit of success. There’s also been pretty big jumps in harvesting robots and complete indoor argriculture systems. But all of it is either automated versions of contemporary farm vehicles or production-line like arm robots for growing indoors.
One factor in soil erosion is actually the problem that the weight and vibration of tractors, packing the earth and messing up the balance of worms, bacteria, etc in the soil.
Interesting point but I feel like what you gain in weight and vibration loss with humanoid robots you’d lose on every 20th of them just spraying hydraulic fluid and/or oil for the inevitable failure
eh, a tractor requires a shitton of roads, huge open fields and monoculture. robots like this could use the same walking infrastructure that people use. with these, we could plant three sisters type stuff instead of modern monocolture agriculture.
so yeah, it’s goofy but also not quite the same as a combine harvester
I thought I was alone in thinking this. A better model for agriculture and a food system is often not compatible with large machinery like combine harvesters. Doing polyculture and other agroecological models would mean we have to rethink what agricultural automation looks like, with a more human scale.
i dont think modern mechanized farming is compatible with having any kind of biosphere. so unless we stop farming on earth and do it on some magical FREE REAL ESTATE, sustainable farming is more labor intensive, because you simply cant send an omni-sprayer and an omni-chewer across the artificially flattened landscape. or, it will require robots that can walk around muddy tracks and hillsides and fields, pick tomatoes from the vine, carefully prune plants that need pruning, etc. y’know, the really hard stuff to automate.
I’m all for the physical and mental labor distinction fading away over time, but I have the feeling that a humanoid robot is a really inefficient way of solving this with robotics. Like isn’t this exactly part of what a modern tractor does?
It does that, and more over a larger area and faster.
If anything, you could find a way to get these giant mfs to drive on their own with some remote instructions maybe, but I guess that doesn’t scratch some people’s itch of owning humans and having them harvest wheat one by one
Advanced farm machinery is semi-autonomous right now. It’s really really cool and also a critical point of tension in capitalism as the needs of farmers, ag megacorps, heavy industry firms, and people who eat food are all pulling in different directions.
While I’m a pretty heavy autonomous cars skeptic, autonomous farm machinery is much more reasonable and much closer.
There’s a few companies already producing test combine harvesters for example and there’s been at least one farm here in the UK which is staffed by researchers working to make it 100% autonomous, with quite a bit of success. There’s also been pretty big jumps in harvesting robots and complete indoor argriculture systems. But all of it is either automated versions of contemporary farm vehicles or production-line like arm robots for growing indoors.
Oh… the really REALLY expensive ones are.
Word. How much does a cutting edge combine cost now? Like a million us dollars or somethjing?
One factor in soil erosion is actually the problem that the weight and vibration of tractors, packing the earth and messing up the balance of worms, bacteria, etc in the soil.
Interesting point but I feel like what you gain in weight and vibration loss with humanoid robots you’d lose on every 20th of them just spraying hydraulic fluid and/or oil for the inevitable failure
eh, a tractor requires a shitton of roads, huge open fields and monoculture. robots like this could use the same walking infrastructure that people use. with these, we could plant three sisters type stuff instead of modern monocolture agriculture.
so yeah, it’s goofy but also not quite the same as a combine harvester
I thought I was alone in thinking this. A better model for agriculture and a food system is often not compatible with large machinery like combine harvesters. Doing polyculture and other agroecological models would mean we have to rethink what agricultural automation looks like, with a more human scale.
i dont think modern mechanized farming is compatible with having any kind of biosphere. so unless we stop farming on earth and do it on some magical FREE REAL ESTATE, sustainable farming is more labor intensive, because you simply cant send an omni-sprayer and an omni-chewer across the artificially flattened landscape. or, it will require robots that can walk around muddy tracks and hillsides and fields, pick tomatoes from the vine, carefully prune plants that need pruning, etc. y’know, the really hard stuff to automate.