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cultibotics
Technology for its own sake vs. benefits
On using robots to make gardening scalable to millions of acres…
You might wonder why I want to turn land management over to robots. Is it because I'm such a geek that I think everything goes bet...
23 December 2012, by
John Payne
Quote from Clay Johnson, author of “The Information Diet”
We industrialized our agricultural firms, consolidating them into multinational, billion dollar publicly traded corporations. As a result, they no longer have nutritional responsibility, they have fid...
30 July 2012, by
John Payne
Aeroponics (using mist in place of full submersion)
LED lights are far more efficient than incandescents, but enough light to drive photosynthesis will still require significant power, so one still might ask where the power is going to come from....
15 July 2012, by
John Payne
Video: new remote sensors from Agri Con at DLG Field Days
See on Scoop.it - Cultibotics
Hermann Leithold, product manager for Agri Con, explains the company’s precision technologies at its display at DLG Field Days in Bernburg-Strenzfeld, Germany, held ...
09 July 2012, by
John Payne
TE+ND Rover in Boca Bearings competition
In case you've forgotten, this video provides a clear explanation of the concept behind and the mechanical workings of the TE+ND Rover.
For more, check out their page on the com...
05 July 2012, by
John Payne
Field Robot Event 2012 in video
The first video in this playlist is a presentation given last year at the announcement of the event. The rest were taken at the event itself, and show the nature of the competition as well a...
05 July 2012, by
John Payne
10th annual Field Robot Event underway
This year's Field Robot Event (FRE 2012) began today and runs through Saturday. I will bring together what reports I am able to find once the dust settles, but meanwhile you can view videos from past ...
28 June 2012, by
John Payne
Nikolaus Correll at TEDx Front Range 2012
University of Colorado Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll, speaking at TEDx Front Range earlier this year, outlined his vision for transforming agriculture through robotic cultivation.
...
16 June 2012, by
John Payne
2012 Field Robot Event, June 28th – 30th
This will be the 10th edition of the Field Robot Event. Organized by Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Wageningen UR (University & Research), it will be held in Venlo, The Nether...
16 June 2012, by
John Payne
Agricultural robotics at the European Robotics Forum 2012
A press release issued by the European Robotics Platform website regarding agricultural robotics as a presence at the European Robotics Forum 2012 makes plain not only that there is a significant leve...
16 April 2012, by
John Payne
Horto domi: The open garden by Outer Babylon
More information available here and here....
25 March 2012, by
John Payne
Platform for agricultural robotics development
Something that would help move the work on robotic sensors and manipulators for agriculture forward would be an affordable, robust platform on which they could be mounted and transported through a fie...
05 March 2012, by
John Payne
Australian research organization’s description of agricultural robotics
On a web page describing their current efforts in agricultural robotics, CSIRO ICT Centre describes the focus area this way:
The application of field robotics to agriculture is an emerging area of ...
09 January 2012, by
John Payne
IPM: Integrated pest management
The concept of Integrated Pest Management has been around for several decades, and is just as useful in a robotic, no-till scenario as it is combined with conventional, traction-based agricu...
16 December 2011, by
John Payne
Reforming agriculture through more sophisticated mechanization
Historically, at least since the mechanization of agriculture began in earnest, there have been two primary measures of agricultural productivity, the amount that could be grown on a given acreage and...
10 December 2011, by
John Payne
Abandoned railway roadbeds
In the Emma Marris video, linked from a previous post, there appears to be an abandoned railway roadbed in the background. Such spaces almost automatically return to nature, left to themselves for a ...
26 November 2011, by
John Payne
Emma Marris: Rambunctious Garden
While I fully expect Emma Marris would deem the use of robots to create her Rambunctious Garden a distraction, and my contention that robotics is necessary to the achievement of sustainabili...
26 November 2011, by
John Payne
The importance of robotics to the achievement of sustainability
In a mid-August post bearing the same title, on my primary blog, I stated:
I firmly believe that (short of convincing the vast majority of people to return to subsistence farming, something which cou...
28 September 2011, by
John Payne
Agricultural robotics and employment
At least with regard to agriculture, the effect of robotics upon employment depends on the approach taken. If your goal is to further reduce the number of people deriving an income from farming, and y...
12 June 2011, by
John Payne
Some things can’t be done without robots
I had pretentions of being a back-to-the-land hippy before I ever became seriously interested in robotics, but my brother successfully popped that bubble with a simple, unarguable observation, that mo...
26 March 2011, by
John Payne
Harvest automation
And so it begins! The January 14th episode of Robots Podcast features an interview with Joe Jones, CTO of Harvest Automation (previously with iRobot).
Harvest Automation didn't start out ...
06 February 2011, by
John Payne
The ascendency of Arduino
http://vimeo.com/18539129
This video consists of the earliest participants in the Arduino project talking about how it got started.
Checking Vimeo, there are over 4,000 video...
16 January 2011, by
John Payne
DARPA-led consortium casts a wide net
A consortium of U.S. government agencies, lead by DARPA, has jointly issued a solicitation for small business proposals: Joint-Agency SBIR Funding Opportunity Announcement.
The participating ...
31 October 2010, by
John Payne
The potential of agriculture as a market for robotics
When I imagine robots tending land, it's nearly always machines that are supported from above, on a beam that itself is supported by wheels running either on rails or in troughs that double as a deliv...
16 August 2010, by
John Payne
A plant positioning system based on suspension
Something which could be accomplished through robotics that couldn't economically be accomplished using human labor would be maximizing the utilization of a very limited surface area (and the sunlight...
02 August 2010, by
John Payne
The pursuit of collaboration
Two heads are generally better than one, and while that truism doesn't necessarily scale very well, it can and often does in the open source software movement.
Willow Garage is out to make it...
05 May 2010, by
John Payne
Rail & gantry bot
This is actually a 3D printer, but [elevate the rails and] replace the print head with a couple of general purpose robotic arms and you've got the makings of a gardening robot.
Reposted f...
13 March 2010, by
John Payne
The empowerment of small-scale industrial designers
This Wired video discusses how easy it has become to get ahold of custom parts. Not mentioned, but quite obviously working away, is a 3D printer, building up a bust using deposited material.
...
01 March 2010, by
John Payne
The application of ‘elegance’ to machine behavior
We all have some idea of what elegance means, whether our notion of it is tied up with silky evening dresses, polished wood and brass, chandeliers and stained glass windows, exotic carpets, and expens...
30 January 2010, by
John Payne
