two-cylinder
Member
- Location
- Cambridge
One man on a thousand acres, and four people in Costa Coffee shop 20 feet square.
One Man to a Thousand Acres
- Thread starter DrWazzock
- Start date
That's a very small tankfull, if combine bot including load is less than half a ton!! Bang goes the 'less compaction' theory, they'll be like flies round the proverbial trying to harvest a 15tpha wheat crop before the auto moisture sensor stops them. Why do they have to be miniature?It goes up a ramp which doubles as a conductive charging surface
I don't imagine any of these bots would weigh more than 300-500kg.
Imagination is the mother of invention
Pieces_of_Eight
Member
They don't have to be, it's just how I imagine them.
I imagine multipurpose bots that can seed, spray, fert, weed and harvest.
Bulky crops like beet and maize might just end up being driverless electric (or nuclear) versions of the harvesters we already have.
- Location
- Ceredigion, wales
Maybe this will happen for large scale arable and veg but it's a long way off for hill / livestock farms.
Traffic dodger
Member
Farming food might be totally different in the future, it could be algae or insects . We are thinking of robots with traditional crops.
- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
That is part of the ethical / legal debate surrounding driverless cars now . . . Who is at " fault " in an accident ?
And yet, it will be on the " prairies " somewhere, North America or Australia with much larger fields & longer distances ( & therefore greater logistical challenges ) that this sort of tech IS being developed & WILL be utilised. LESS logistical challenges, far less obstacles, far greater efficiency, far less potential problems from people, walls, pylons, vehicles, rights of way, gateways, idiots, disaster of whatever kind, biggest risk a flat battery.
As for driverless technology ? Meh, it's not that new. Most of the challenges / impediments to the Google car are now ethical, in regards to the decision making software & how it prioritises ( ie - do I swerve around a pedestrian, potentially endangering my occupants, but I run over a dog to avoid swerving ??? ) or legislative, by various traffic authorities.
Driverless technology is alive & well in the open cut & underground mining industries, especially open cut with massive trucks . . . I can't quite see a robot scraping off a stuck up beet harvester, or spotting a broken gate bar on a turbine sharpish? red ligt on says stop, human to the rescue again
We have no idea where technology will lead us. As you mentioned phones - my first brick in the 90's was just a phone. Successive phones after that were just smaller & lighter, but still basically a telephone.
Look at a smartphone now, they are basically an office in your hand, that also happens to be a phone. The power, the applications, the reliance we place on that now, has no bounds , we could not imagine only 10 yrs ago . .And still the most erratic signal, short battery life etc as 20yrs ago
As for reliability, I'm still on my original iPhone 5 that has been dropped, kicked, through deserts & rain storms. . .
Certainly not average lifespan, have you actually used it to make calls? What, like...tractors???? naahhh, it'll never catch on!
You're thinking like a farmer: margin over cost.
Fendt price their products by: cost plus markup, where the markup is used as a divining tool for finding idiots.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
What's everyone going to have to moan about then?
It is funny how things work in big cycles, there's been unmanned robots around for centuries, fertilising and maintaining the land, eradicating weeds and running on solar energy...
Shame they produce methane or folk would think they were made for the job of progressing agriculture past the industrial age.
I'm still quaint enough to believe in their ability to outthink the human race.
It seems strange that even most livestock farmers see their ruminant workforce as the golden egg, and not the goose!
Would be amazing to see the world without herbicide and neonicotinoid reliance, and a few more 'swarms' of ruminants, fowl, and beneficial insects doing the job.
G.O.A.T. tech..
- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
f**k me - anything I can do to get out of being stuck in a tractor cab all day . . .
I can't believe people actually "enjoy" tractor driving ? I do it because it's a tool I need to perform a job with, that's all, it's certainly not the " be all & end all "
f**k driving tractors, bring in the robot swarms I say
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Enough of that entrepreneurial thinking you hobby farming pansy.fudge me - anything I can do to get out of being stuck in a tractor cab all day . . .
I can't believe people actually "enjoy" tractor driving ? I do it because it's a tool I need to perform a job with, that's all, it's certainly not the " be all & end all "
fudge driving tractors, bring in the robot swarms I say
To make it in proper farming, you need to start thinking more like an employee of your farm, and get to burning some fuel.
Off you go.....
RushesToo
Member
- Location
- Fingringhoe
There are loads of problems to overcome. But most of them have *speculative* answers
Cost - what is currently happening is that you don't own your tractor / cat / house, mostly they are loaned to you, some you pay back and some you don't.
You might buy these but you probably won't even though ultimately the cost per hectare will be lower than the kit you currently own.
These machines could well be loaned, they will go where needed. They will be picked up from places no longer needed by couriers [driverless] and loosed in to a new field, controlled by data used to predict need.
Cost - what is currently happening is that you don't own your tractor / cat / house, mostly they are loaned to you, some you pay back and some you don't.
You might buy these but you probably won't even though ultimately the cost per hectare will be lower than the kit you currently own.
These machines could well be loaned, they will go where needed. They will be picked up from places no longer needed by couriers [driverless] and loosed in to a new field, controlled by data used to predict need.
Fendt can price them how they want - when the Chinese start banging them out like smartphones they will be cheap, There is very little hardware in them and I think the IP will be hard to protect as they are just a collection of existing tech hardware wise
I'm not sure manufacture will even sell them ? why do they need to when they could start the farming contract companies that run them themselves ?
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This thread reminds me of a post I made on BFF maybe 15yrs ago now
I had just had our first tracked JD tractor with brown box starfire, (it wasn't even available on wheeled tractors back then) and I posted about how it was the future and it would become as standard as aircon on tractors over a certain size, I said I thought it would save inputs and increase productivity a lot
replies told me how they enjoyed steering tractors and such tech was for idiots with no skill, there was no need for automatic steer and it was a gimmick that wouldn't catch on and would be too expensive for all but the very biggest farms to afford ....................
I had just had our first tracked JD tractor with brown box starfire, (it wasn't even available on wheeled tractors back then) and I posted about how it was the future and it would become as standard as aircon on tractors over a certain size, I said I thought it would save inputs and increase productivity a lot
replies told me how they enjoyed steering tractors and such tech was for idiots with no skill, there was no need for automatic steer and it was a gimmick that wouldn't catch on and would be too expensive for all but the very biggest farms to afford ....................
how about the robot chaser bin collects from the many robot harvesters when they signal to it they are full - the chaser bin(s) multiple small ones take grain to the driverless bulker lorry that takes grain to store
I think what gets more interesting is we can get away from growing monocultures in our fields, if we can plant, tend and harvest plants individually then we can grow serval crops the same field at the same time which is far better for soil and environment
think laterally this could change the landscape even !
- Location
- pembrokeshire
i had an uncle like that never drove a tractor in his life he had three through his farming career he retired in about 1990 at seventy something kept his farm sound in good hart well drained and in good repair always employed a man and kept a horse in training old fashioned he might have been but he had a good life
RushesToo
Member
- Location
- Fingringhoe
The risk that you are exposed to is less, if you have 50 machines and one breaks down your risk is lower than a single essential piece of equipment failing. This is how the internet works, it is designed as far as possible to not rely on a single point of failure.
[I don't want to talk about aggressive attacks on satellites, but location will become more local I have no doubt - the same principal as the Internet]
[I don't want to talk about aggressive attacks on satellites, but location will become more local I have no doubt - the same principal as the Internet]
- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
exactly
you wouldn't even entertain the thought of buying a tractor ( even second hand ) for arable work now without it being equipped with auto steer. The benefits to driver & the operation are just too many to ignore
years ago a friend of mine ( who had his own place, ran sheep mainly, plus had a truck which he did grain harvest work with ) said that he enjoyed doing a bit of casual tractor driving for his neighbours because it gave him a chance to " turn the brain off & the radio on ". To him, tractor driving was his "thinking" time, as otherwise it was a fairly mind numbing brain dead occupation. Yes, it requires a certain degree of skill, mechanical empathy & observation of whats happening, but lets face it, it doesn't really need Mensa levels of intellect . . .
I just cant understand the fascination with spending hours in a claustrophobic little glass box sitting behind a wheel . . .
but then, maybe Im not a "real" farmer ? Whatever that means ?
RushesToo
Member
- Location
- Fingringhoe
With machines like this harvesting will be a more leisurely affair. Grains will be harvested when ripe, fields will not be clean felled but when ready. I can see the heat fro the batteries being used to dry any grain that is determined to be best harvested wet. They will go back to base with small but perfect loads, the drop points will be a variant on IBC's for easy carting.
This sounds like science fiction but this is all achievable and the technology is already there. In the same way as containers "happened" it will take a visionary, the Malcolm McLean, Steve Jobs of our age to take what we already have and mould it to serve us.
This sounds like science fiction but this is all achievable and the technology is already there. In the same way as containers "happened" it will take a visionary, the Malcolm McLean, Steve Jobs of our age to take what we already have and mould it to serve us.
- Location
- pembrokeshire
then you will be out of a job an unnecessary mouth to feed when the bots take over you will be expendablefudge me - anything I can do to get out of being stuck in a tractor cab all day . . .
I can't believe people actually "enjoy" tractor driving ? I do it because it's a tool I need to perform a job with, that's all, it's certainly not the " be all & end all "
fudge driving tractors, bring in the robot swarms I say