Automation

[The Agrarian]

Certain operations may not be so difficult to automate, like drilling grain or grubbing.

But I can assure you that it will be a very very long time indeed, if ever, that an autonomous machine could tanker slurry onto fields in the way we have been able to do this spring, on sticky ground and avoiding wet spots.

 

[S00TY]

We will be working in coffee shops or sitting drinking at the coffee shop after we have been to the charity shop.

I often wonder if the people designing and pushing for all this atomisation would be quite so keen if it was their jobs going to be done away with, somehow, I don’t think so.

So do you think we should all open up a chain of charity shops with a posh coffee bit at the back?? We’d be worth a bloody fortune in about 20 years time.

 

[jonnieboy]

Certain operations may not be so difficult to automate, like drilling grain or grubbing.

But I can assure you that it will be a very very long time indeed, if ever, that an autonomous machine could tanker slurry onto fields in the way we have been able to do this spring, on sticky ground and avoiding wet spots.

By the time robots are in common use one would only hope slurry is stored and processed more efficiently then a robot could easily umbilical and inject when the environmental risk is acceptable

 

[Brisel]

I like that idea. Something like a ‘chase’ mode perhaps?

 

[The Agrarian]

Still has to move three miles by back road in my case. I'd like to see a robot rolling up a kinked pipe.

 

[Clive]

Forget the self driving tractor, automation in farming will be carried out by lots of little robots. This company are testing now have products to use by 2021. They have a rental model rather than a purchase model.

https://www.smallrobotcompany.com/

Autonomous tractor already exists and is commercially available from Kubota in Japan / China

We are not waiting fur technology - the wait is for legislation and attitude shift

 

[yellow belly]

The drilling and harvesting robot will have to compete with the large drill and combine on controlled traffic and notill which only compacts 15%0f soil area

Weed control using robots will lead to weeds that look like the crop to the robot some colour and plant structure weed will develop resistance to whatever control method is employed

 

[Robt]

There aren't many weeds that could with stand intense heat from a laser!

 

[Traffic dodger]

Automation will come to all industries in time, it’s just money and will it be cheaper. There will be pain before the gain and a lot of jobs will go. Look at self service tills now in supermarkets, how many people work on the counters in banks now, when was the last time you was served with petrol. It’s coming like it or not.

 

[Still Farming]

Technological progress waits for no man. In another hundred years populations will begin to shrink anyway.

Trump Putin and North Korea will do that.

 

[7610 super q]

Saw that, but the cranes weren't allowed to be autonomous where humans are on the ground.
Would that alter the self driving tractor option if a public footpath runs through your land ?

And after the accident wino the self driving car last week, I feel their is a long way to go.

Until Knight industries can do vehicles like they did for Michael Knight, I think legislation will hold it back.

Typo ? or did you mean.....

 

[davieh3350]

Self driving tractors will be a disaster.
They will be like the driver who only looks forward and who has no ear for something breaking down or going wrong.
How many sensors would it take to be able to tell if a stick or a wayward black silage wrap has fouled up a tine or two on a seeder, or if there's a bearing breaking apart somewhere.

You'll not be able to sit and read your paper (or tff) and drink your coffee in peace for wondering what's going wrong out in the field, and you'll be forever trailing back out to reset something.
The worlds gone mad!

 

[ollie989898]

Self driving tractors will be a disaster.
They will be like the driver who only looks forward and who has no ear for something breaking down or going wrong.
How many sensors would it take to be able to tell if a stick or a wayward black silage wrap has fouled up a tine or two on a seeder, or if there's a bearing breaking apart somewhere.

You'll not be able to sit and read your paper (or tff) and drink your coffee in peace for wondering what's going wrong out in the field, and you'll be forever trailing back out to reset something.
The worlds gone mad!

Far more complex and demanding tasks are carried out by robots than wrapping a few hundred bales in plastic. Robots can fly space shuttles and drive a vehicle on Mars for goodnessake.

 

[davieh3350]

Far more complex and demanding tasks are carried out by robots than wrapping a few hundred bales in plastic. Robots can fly space shuttles and drive a vehicle on Mars for goodnessake.

Indeed they can.
They're making money or have vast budgets and backing behind them.

 

[ollie989898]

Indeed they can.
They're making money or have vast budgets and backing behind them.

Yet it was done with technology years old now.

The lure of saving vast amounts of money on labour will be a big cherry for many companies hoping to buy into this technology.

I have an acquaitance who designs automated swarm forklift systems. They equip stores and factories with robots to stack and store pallets/boxes with millimetric precision and they are all completely blind. One breaks down the other 7 work harder to compensate. Back a truck into the loading dock and they load or unload it as required. 100 percent error free operation and no human need ever enter the place. They can even function in minus 30 degrees and total darkness if required.

Now try finding 8 qualified forklift truck drivers looking for work in the UK.

 

[Traffic dodger]

He’s right the warehouse will be completely dark, saves electric for lights and heating

 

[Tom_o_m]

Automation means less rather than no employment; machines need instructing and maintaining. But I still expect huge job losses across multiple sectors in the next 15 years.

Trump can pretend otherwise, but you can't stop progress and return to a golden age of high employment production.

 

[ollie989898]

Automation means less rather than no employment; machines need instructing and maintaining. But I still expect huge job losses across multiple sectors in the next 15 years.

Trump can pretend otherwise, but you can't stop progress and return to a golden age of high employment production.

The economy today employs far more people than it did at the turn of the industrial revolution. The nature of employment will shift, as it always has. It wont mean no work at all it will mean people find different work.

 

[ollie989898]

He’s right the warehouse will be completely dark, saves electric for lights and heating

I didnt enquire as to why such a capability might be needed but I assumed it could be because of the nature of the items or materials being stored requiring refrigeration or darkness?

 

[Traffic dodger]

That’s ok but the people doing some of these jobs with the best will in the world would not be able to maintain etc this new technology