Re:Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot
by qq66 on Thursday July 06, 2017 @11:41PM
(#14715853)
If you are organic certified, and you could build something as fast and big as a combine harvester to remove weeds... why not?
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Re:Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot
by ekianjo on Thursday July 06, 2017 @11:46PM
(#14715873)
> organic certified
That may be a use case, but the large majority of grown food is not organic-certified. Does it make sense for such productions?
Re:Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot
by jeromenerf on Friday July 07, 2017 @02:33AM
(#14716525)
No. Large size monoculture should rely on preventive methods to control weeds, such as always covering the soil. It's even possible to plant seeds on an existing live cover.
No plowing, no pesticides, just preventive coverage and good tools.
In the long run, those large monocultures don't make sense anyway.
Robots can be great for a lot of high maintenance, Human intensive, high value cultures such as fruits, greens ...
I guess they could also help expand vegetables farms to non cultivated areas, in some autonomous ways.