Robohub.org
 

Robots under glass: The threshold of minimal investment

by
04 January 2009



share this:

For the time being, it probably doesn’t make good economic sense to dedicate sophisticated machinery to managing a patch of ground that’s unprotected from the elements, when it might just as well be working inside a greenhouse, where it actually can operate 24/365, and where it won’t need the structural strength to stand up to gale force winds.

 

On the other hand, greenhouses are most useful when combined with regular gardens and used seasonally to start plants earlier than they could be started in the open, or when the shade from other plants would impede sprouting or development. Even a relatively frail machine, better adapted to spending its time indoors, might venture out in calm weather, long enough to set out plants it had started in trays and peat pots, provided it was sufficiently mobile.

 

This scenario, a machine that does the tedious work of planting seeds and tending plants in a greenhouse, moving them out to open ground when conditions allow, is what might be termed a natural starting point for the development of such machines, a more limited, more surmountable engineering problem than a machine intended to perform all aspects of land management. A machine applied this way need not be able to perform absolutely every horticultural operation to be useful, nor would it need to be able to deal with a completely uncontrolled environment.

 

It’s very likely that there are other such natural starting points for the development of cultibots. Collectively, these natural starting points represent a threshold of minimal investment before a return on that investment can be forthcoming. Once that threshold has been crossed, at any point, incremental improvements should be adequate to insure that machines which can handle the whole job are eventually produced, and the return on that initial investment could be very sweet indeed.

 

There’s another, equally important threshold to consider, the automation of the production of these machines. So long as they are hand-crafted prototypes, they have no chance of competing economically with hand labor, or, as is more likely, with the transportation of produce from milder climates. Mass production will get them into the game.

 

Self-reconfiguring factories that not only build such machines but which can also replicate, by building the equipment for new factories and the machines to assemble them, will drive down the cost to the point where the logic behind it all becomes inexorable, but by that point we’re no longer talking only about machines for land management, and there had best be very solid safeguards in place. The point of mentioning this scenario in the context of cultibotics at all is that land management may be the one application of robotics where the size of the potential market could justify the investment to cross this threshold. Once crossed, of course, the technology would be generally applicable.

 

Reposted from Cultibotics.



tags: , , , , ,


John Payne





Related posts :



Open Robotics Launches the Open Source Robotics Alliance

The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) is pleased to announce the creation of the Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA), a new initiative to strengthen the governance of our open-source robotics so...

Robot Talk Episode 77 – Patricia Shaw

In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Patricia Shaw from Aberystwyth University all about home assistance robots, and robot learning and development.
18 March 2024, by

Robot Talk Episode 64 – Rav Chunilal

In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Rav Chunilal from Sellafield all about robotics and AI for nuclear decommissioning.
31 December 2023, by

AI holidays 2023

Thanks to those that sent and suggested AI and robotics-themed holiday videos, images, and stories. Here’s a sample to get you into the spirit this season....
31 December 2023, by and

Faced with dwindling bee colonies, scientists are arming queens with robots and smart hives

By Farshad Arvin, Martin Stefanec, and Tomas Krajnik Be it the news or the dwindling number of creatures hitting your windscreens, it will not have evaded you that the insect world in bad shape. ...
31 December 2023, by

Robot Talk Episode 63 – Ayse Kucukyilmaz

In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Ayse Kucukyilmaz from the University of Nottingham about collaboration, conflict and failure in human-robot interactions.
31 December 2023, by





Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


©2024 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence


 












©2021 - ROBOTS Association