As a farmer, as much as the techie in me would love nothing more, I struggle to see it. There is a pretty large chasm between hobbyist-level tools and industrial-level tools, and it is a stretch to, quite literally, bet the farm on the former. Proven tools with timely service and support are essential to getting the work done in time.
Robotics is already big in agriculture and has been for decades. As someone once said "technology is developed by military, adopted by agriculture, and then the rest of the world is finally exposed to it." If you can dream of a way to robotize agriculture, it is quite likely already commercially available. Any farmers who do happen to come up with a novel idea to improve agriculture will be undoubtedly looking at commercialization to raise the necessary capital to develop such a machine.
There is unquestionably a long history of farmers bringing innovations to the industry, and undoubtedly will continue to be, but they are not exactly projects that you slap together in your free time from open source materials. Those who have something to build put forth serious investment, and often requiring outside investment, to make them a reality.
That said, I could definitely see popularity among gardeners, where the scale is tiny and the practice is already a hobby.
What will be transformative is changes to the legal framework that will relieve human operators from overseeing the robots that do exist, without fear of legal repercussions should things go wrong (and they will; farm equipment breaks constantly given the harsh environment it has to operate in).
Use of lasers to kill unwanted plants instead of herbicides,
Planting symbiotic plants near each other,
Providing a interface "like farmville" but the actions are executed by robots, on a real farm
Given the large cost of repairs, can a swarm of robots compete on cost? If my one big robot breaks down, I fix it once and it's good to go. When my swarm of robots start to break down, I have to fix the same thing n number of times.
How about transport? Lots of farmers around here have farms which are 50+ miles apart. Right now they can hop into their one robot and drive it to the next farm. Does the swarm need to be loaded onto a trailer and trucked to the next farm? Autonomous on-road operation on country roads definitely isn't coming any time soon.
Don't get me wrong, the idea is neat. But it has to actually be better than the alternatives to see adoption.
Doing complex detailed work which could innovate the way farming is done ex: 1)not using chemicals, by killing weeds/bugs using robot/symbiotic approach 2)plant plants together (symbiotic plants, complementary vegetables: roots and plants) 3)using the land to plant more crops more densely
> Given the large cost of repairs, can a swarm of robots compete on cost? If my one big robot breaks down, I fix it once and it's good to go. When my swarm of robots start to break down, I have to fix the same thing n number of times.
I think cost will be an issue this swarms being much more expensive. However they won't break all at once ant you would always have a working fleet. Also the quality would be better, because the same unit would be used everywhere small scale and large scale.
>How about transport? Lots of farmers around here have farms which are 50+ miles apart. Right now they can hop into their one robot and drive it to the next farm. Does the swarm need to be loaded onto a trailer and trucked to the next farm? Autonomous on-road operation on country roads definitely isn't coming any time soon.
I think that this "startup" will have the logistics sorted by having a large area of land in one piece
>Don't get me wrong, the idea is neat. But it has to actually be better than the alternatives to see adoption.
Definitely. And that would require a very advanced robot. And maybe we already have the technology. But it would need enormous resources poured into it to make such an advanced product that offers all the benefits. And I don't know if the benefits are real/worth it.
...and what's stopping the same from happening to farming robots? In fact I'd say it's even easier, since there's no existing notion that they have to be easily serviceable, unlike tractors.
The next Red Hat could come along and get paid to implement and support it all.
If the robots are going to harvest the same amount of product, they are going to need at least similar amounts of power to today's machines. If they are airborne, and doing fancy AI things too, they will need far more power for every ton harvested. However it is harvested, by hand or by flying drone, the same weight of fruit has to make it from field to barn.
Not efficient. But they are good for checking on your plants.
And if you do have a big solarfield and a small wind turbine as well, you probably can power your own machines.
I think robotic farming with less pesticide spray will be the future! There seem to be an ever increasing size increase of tractors. Many of these tractors runs proprietary software John Deere which makes them hard to self service. Robots can run from solar/bio energy generated locally at the farm.
I think there will be a movement of build your own open source robots at farms. Farmers are very inventive and good at making things!