[HN Gopher] A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside...
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A robot to replace the need for farmers to go inside the grain bin
Author : ryansouza
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-06-10 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.agweb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.agweb.com)
| nico_h wrote:
| Here is a negative two cents idea: Attach a dumb auger drive
| "robot" to the end of tether adjustable from the top, with an
| umbilical to solar panels, maybe a lidar or sonar to see the
| shape of the field, make it go in spiral back and forth Roomba
| style. Eventually you'll have run all over the grain multiple
| times. No need for fancy deep learning AI.
| nico_h wrote:
| If you don't have to make it as fast as possible in a pay per
| time used way, maybe the dumb solution can be cost effective.
| neilv wrote:
| Whomever manages to sell a product called "Grain Weevil" to
| _farmers_ must be unfathomably brilliant.
| voisin wrote:
| Crazy that this work has been done by hand. I always assumed
| there would be an augur or something inside.
| quesera wrote:
| Made me laugh. An augur is a person who inteprets the will of
| the gods, which would certainly have applications, even inside
| a grain silo!
|
| But an auger would be more directly useful to the problem at
| hand.
|
| Apologies for the pedantry!
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| There are augurs inside, but the grain doesn't always
| cooperate. Sometimes it clumps up or the augur creates a void,
| in which case a person has to go in and break up the clumps.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| And FWIW the word is auger, which I misspelled.
| masklinn wrote:
| There are definitely automation tools (augers, aerators, ...)
| but they tend to be pretty fixed and inflexible, and sometimes
| there's an issue with them, and you need one of each system you
| want / need for each bin.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Can you make a big one I can drive around some sand dunes?
| exporectomy wrote:
| Colin Furze made one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuDNc-_4v94
| jonplackett wrote:
| That was awesome! Who the hell is this guy and why is he
| wearing a shirt and tie driving a screw-tank?!
| atum47 wrote:
| Just saw an article on Reddit in how dangerous this is. Back in
| college I was being asked to develop a project to a rice factory,
| so I went there several times. In one occasion a worker fell in
| one of those grain bin and died a slowly death. Scary as heck.
| seneca wrote:
| Agriculture is an area still ripe for technological innovation.
| It looks less and less like it did a generation ago, but there
| are still many dangerous tasks, like this one, involved and, I
| believe, many that could be made much more efficient.
|
| I love to see projects like this making a difference for people
| doing critical, and often dangerous, blue collar work.
| masklinn wrote:
| The problem is that the "easy" stuff was assisted if not
| automated a while ago, the stuff that's always the same and
| pretty much just requires mechanical muscle.
|
| What's left over tends to be either controlling the stuff,
| dealing with failures, or work which has enough variance that
| it's really hard to automate reliably and perfectly.
| wbc wrote:
| Probably coincidence but I've noticed a ton of grain articles
| lately, here's a trending on on reddit from today:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nwmect/til_t...
| hpoe wrote:
| Ya I read PG's article on getting a publicist recently. Now I
| wnat to know who is this company's publicist.
| bewareandaware wrote:
| This seems like another high tech solution looking for a problem.
| I'm not heavy agriculture savy but it seems to me the same could
| be solved by having 2 or 3 archimedes screws on the bin which
| could keep grain moving over time and preventing it from forming
| the clods.
|
| The bot could also be radio controlled and it would still remove
| the need of a human going in.
|
| Another pet peeve of mine is the robot-as-a-service part - can't
| we just buy stuff and keep it anymore?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I agree robot as a service is annoying. It is a good fit though
| for robotics because your first version is likely to cost too
| much and break too soon. Selling that would make for unhappy
| customers. However investors like the high profit potential and
| that can lead to dark patterns.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Considering an auger is already an archimedes screw and it
| still doesn't stop pockets from forming I don't know if adding
| more of them would help.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I think it's as a service because it's not needed often and
| only in situations where something goes wrong. The cost benefit
| may not work if you had to buy the thing.
| krisoft wrote:
| > The bot could also be radio controlled and it would still
| remove the need of a human going in.
|
| Yes. And it is radio controlled. To quote the article: "The
| Grain Weevil is a remote controlled specialized robot [...]"
| They also plan to make it autonomous but it is not yet.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Just be grateful they didn't promote it as being for search and
| rescue like every robot-solution-looking-for-a-problem that
| gets invented by academics.
| djmips wrote:
| If grain bins are dangerous to go inside, maybe there's a low
| tech solution like safety lines attached to a belt similar to
| mountain climbing or high rise construction.
| gcheong wrote:
| Then you have to gear up, which takes time, and maybe you only
| have to go in for a little bit to clear something, and also now
| you are tethered which may hinder your mobility and could in
| itself become a hazard. I recall something I read about people
| who work in high places like antenna towers would often rather
| do away with the harness if safety regulations allowed as they
| find it tedious to be unhooking and rehooking every few steps
| up the ladder.
| toxik wrote:
| Why don't they just basically lead climb their way up? Seems
| like it'd be a decent compromise.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > I recall something I read about people who work in high
| places like antenna towers would often rather do away with
| the harness if safety regulations allowed as they find it
| tedious to be unhooking and rehooking every few steps up the
| ladder.
|
| As a rock climber I find this comment absurd if true. Unless
| the number is extremely small.
|
| I also find rigging a multi-pitch anchor and keeping ropes
| untangled tedious. But guess what: that keeps me alive! Sure
| there are some who climb without ropes, but that's an
| extremely small number of people.
| gcheong wrote:
| Life is full of absurdities apparently:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO6YiImtMXM
| jcims wrote:
| You're climbing on tricky terrain for the fun and challenge
| of it. They are climbing a large ladder because there isn't
| an elevator. My brother used to climb poles for his job
| (may still from time to time). He wouldn't strap his belt
| round the pole until he got to the top and needed to free
| up his hands.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It'd need to be able to pull you out somehow - the danger here
| is being entrapped and squeezed in the grain, not a fall.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I assume weight is a part of what entraps someone. What if
| you used bungee cords to reduce your weight? Or had a rip
| cord you could pull that would yank you out.
| splistud wrote:
| Yes, using a harness is standard (recommended) practice, along
| with someone to pull the other end
| h2odragon wrote:
| Safety lines in this context help retrieve the corpse.
| h2odragon wrote:
| A farmer I knew had run the numbers on the cycle time for
| unloading grain wagons at harvest time; paying neighborhood kids
| $3/hr (in 1982 or so) to dance on top of the grain as it drained
| paid off. There were bars to grab on the top of the wagons so it
| wasn't _deeply_ dangerous, but it certainly got exciting.
|
| His kids were the ones driving the wagon trains from the fields
| to the silos. That was even more exciting. No insurance, just "if
| you break it you have to help fix it"
| chasd00 wrote:
| i use to help my uncle bale hay. I would drive the truck and
| pull the trailer in the pasture while he and my cousin loaded
| the bales. I was around 9 or 10 and it was the coolest thing i
| had ever done ( at the time ) hah.
| Traster wrote:
| I would be kind of interested to know how many times the farmers
| need to go into the grain bin to rescue the robot.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| Once we can make bread with nothing but sunlight and robots
| humanity will be so much closer to being free from work.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office
| worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at
| you without critical thought just because you can portray your
| product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their
| hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous
| job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks
| of the worst outcomes and then getting the job done. To them it's
| no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an
| implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain
| hopper is not a dangerous task to them. It's just a task and like
| any other task you should approach it in a smart manner if you
| want the best results. Selling something as a safety improvement
| isn't that easy because the physics involved in bulk materials or
| heavy equipment are always going to hurt people who don't work
| smart given enough exposure and likewise the ROI of removing any
| one type of exposure is low.
|
| Now, if the machine can all but eliminate the need for the manual
| job they might sell a few. Because farmers love when shit just
| magically works because the day only has so many hours in it and
| one less someone has to stop what you're doing to deal with.
|
| On a more technical note, bulk dry goods can generally be
| persuaded to follow gravity if you give them a kick start with
| vibration. This approach has a bunch of pluses (the equipment is
| very reliable and typically you can resolve blockage by varying
| the frequency) but I don't know why it isn't used for grain
| (though it is used on the trucks and rail cars that transport
| grain). You typically see it in bulk material handling settings
| where you can't afford to stop the line and/or it's too dangerous
| to make someone clear a blockage manually so I assume it's a cost
| thing and farming margins aren't big enough. It seems like these
| guys went and invented a robot that solves a problem that has an
| existing solution. But the article doesn't mention why the
| existing solution doesn't get used for grain and why the new
| robot will. I get that it's a high level press release but I
| still wanna know.
| jcims wrote:
| I've seen lots of people calling OPs statement stupid, but
| nobody actually countering the primary claim in the very first
| sentence.
|
| The likelihood that your rank and file farmer is going to drop
| $5K on this thing when they know in the back of their mind that
| every time it fails they are going to have to get back into the
| grain bin anyway, is very very low.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| I've been involved in several IT projects and companies in the
| agricultural industry over the years. Most people that try to
| solve agricultural problems with tech are surprised to find
| that there is far less money in agriculture than they expected
| and farmers are far less willing to part with it on unproven
| tech.
| notatoad wrote:
| There _is_ money in agriculture, but it 's not the same sort
| of money that tech people are used to. Big tech thrives on
| dumb money - people are willing to make bets on unproven tech
| in the hopes that it will either make their lives easier or
| make them look like they are "innovating" to their customers
| or their bosses.
|
| the medium-scale farms (~10-20 permanent staff + labourers) i
| have experience with will have no problem making 6-figure
| purchases if they can do the math and see that the capital
| investment will pay off in a reasonable amount of time. the
| money is there, it's just not gambled. there's no value for a
| farmer in the appearance of innovation.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Your first two sentences are pretty unfriendly. I'm not trying
| to be snide.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I don't think so - I got burned precisely by this -> people
| that work with danger regularly are actually used to it and
| do not faint or fall to you lap if you offer some marginal
| mitigation
|
| Sometimea even to their own detriment
| bombcar wrote:
| A solution that removes some minor but commonly encountered
| inconvenience is an easier sell than one that removes a
| rare but fatal one.
|
| So a setup that keeps the steering wheel cool even in the
| hot sun may sell better than a device that prevents the
| tractor from flipping over on you.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I feel that hackernews readers need the blunt reminder once
| in a while.
| legitster wrote:
| Preach.
|
| On the internet it's very easy for people to talk themselves
| into incredibly high standards for anything. But in real life
| most people are pretty astute at marginal trade-offs between
| risk and cost.
|
| While it may look like you have a product with no competitors
| that will save lives, your actual competitor is "being slightly
| more careful" and it's free and people still aren't buying
| _that_. You still have to justify the value.
| msrenee wrote:
| Being slightly more careful doesn't really help in this
| situation. They are slightly more careful. The smart ones are
| very careful. It's intrinsically dangerous. Someone suggested
| a tag out system and that just makes it clear to me they
| don't understand the mechanics at hand. Why more of them
| don't wear a harness, tie off, and the buddy system, I don't
| know, but that's about the only real way you can recover if
| you get sucked in.
| bombcar wrote:
| Being slightly more careful just is using the harness, etc.
| they don't do it because it takes time and they've done
| this before and it'll be fine this time.
| msrenee wrote:
| It also takes 2 guys and a complete halt of the process.
| If you could just drop something in there that would do
| the job, that may actually save money over the long run.
| Especially if you could keep dispensing while it's
| working.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| If anyone is wondering why it takes two, part of it is
| suspension trauma:
| https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2017/01/01/Suspension-
| Trauma....
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Speaking as someone who knows farmers- they do, in fact,
| consider going into the silo a dangerous task, because everyone
| knows some family that had someone die because of it. They do
| it anyway, because it needs to get done, but they are quite
| aware of the risk. Everything on a farm has to earn its keep in
| terms of ROI, and so will this robot. It may or may not be cost
| effective, and we'll see. But please don't downplay the very
| real danger, just because some folks have to manage it because
| of their job.
| the-pigeon wrote:
| The entire idea that "x workers don't care about safety" is
| just dumb.
|
| Yes some individuals care less than they should. But every
| job has some people who are smart enough to value their own
| safety. And those people will seriously consider any device
| the significantly increases safety.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Yes some individuals care less than they should.
|
| Is it really an amount of "care", or that some people just
| have an ability to not get bogged down by the scary stuff.
| There would be no X-Games at all if we were all wired the
| same. There are people that voluntarilly get off of their
| motorcycle at the apex of their jump to score some extra
| points. That's beyond insane _to me_ , but to them it's
| part of the job.
| bontaq wrote:
| It sure seems that way, across all the youtube farming
| channels I watch, one thing that ties them together is they
| do not like going into the silo and do consider it unsafe. I
| have no idea what OP is talking about besides their
| imagination.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7oxLIP1RRo here's a whole
| episode about grain bin rescue training. They raised $60,000
| for first responders in their grain bin safety campaign.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The alternatives suggested on [1] (from a different comment)
| are much cheaper: long poles, a safety harness, lock tag.
|
| If farmers aren't already using those, why would they buy
| this?
|
| [1] https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-
| death-4-ways-...
| bombcar wrote:
| > Consequences. Of the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants
| killed in 2019, 47% were not wearing seat belts.
|
| And I highly doubt half of those people were driving old
| cars with no seat belts.
|
| If people can't be arsed to use a simple safety tool it's
| going to be a hard sell to build a robot.
|
| Better would be to build a silo that has safety features
| built in and make it competitive on price.
| nimbius wrote:
| "Blue-collar" worker here. safety is the first trade we learn
| in school and the first job we start at every site. Your real
| uphill battle with this thing isnt going to be safety, its
| repair. Can I fix it with a stick welder and parts from a
| Tractor Supply? If not, its just another John Deere money
| machine.
|
| If you REALLY want farmers to use it, make it OPEN SOURCE.
| celticninja wrote:
| Doesn't have to be open source, just needs to be repairable
| on site, not in a week's time when someone comes out to it.
| In that time someone has to risk their life to do the job
| it should be doing.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Yup. I worked as a welder in a shipyard for a couple of
| years after the first .com crash. Of the 12 weeks of
| training they put you through before you were allowed on
| the yard, a good 8 of them were covering all the ways you
| could die, and how to avoid them. Anyone who didn't take it
| seriously was shown the door. To paraphrase a motorcycle
| saying, there were old welders, and there were bold
| welders, but there were no old, bold welders!
|
| Regarding repairability, from what I've heard about what
| John Deere is pulling, all I can say is I hope they get hit
| with the legal bat _hard_ , because what they're pulling is
| bullshit.
| lurquer wrote:
| Growing up around silos, I can tell you... of all the dangerous
| stuff on a farm, that was the one thing that folks warned
| about. They are death traps, particularly because it's so damn
| tempting to climb up and get in. (As a kid, anyway.) Or, even
| as an adult, when you're emptying it, it's so tempting to step
| inside (on the bottom) and shovel that last big mound on the
| side down towards the center. (And, then get overwhelmed in an
| avalanche if the big stable mound isn't as stable as you
| think.)
|
| I don't think vibrating would work. Some silos are several
| stories tall, and the grain isn't rigid... in fact, it can be
| quite moist. Point being, vibrations won't travel very far.
| rsync wrote:
| "To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass
| trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going
| into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them."
|
| I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest
| shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin.
|
| If you climb into an enclosed space with _both_ burial and dust
| explosion hazards and your internal alarms aren 't going off
| loud and strong ... you are, sadly, an idiot.
|
| Most of the people I know who handle tasks like this are _not
| idiots_.
| celticninja wrote:
| I agree. The first paragraph of the article contains their
| reasoning behind creating it. An experienced farmer asked
| them to create something so that he (and his children) never
| had to expose themselves to that risk again. They know it is
| dangerous, they may manage that risk but you are a fool if
| you think they would prefer to run the risk rather than find
| a safer alternative.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| There is a post on the front page of reddit[0] today about
| the risks of grain entrapment, and that thread is also full
| of people with firsthand experiences of friends or
| relatives dying on farms from it.
|
| [0]https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nwmect/t
| il_t...
| Krasnol wrote:
| Interesting timing.
| exporectomy wrote:
| This thread is a hilarious game of "I'm better than you
| because I know real farmers". For some reason, certain
| occupations seem to bring out a sanctimonious attitude in
| people that nobody can understand it if they're not
| personally doing it themselves, combined with a failure to
| recognize that those occupationists are diverse and one
| person's personal friends might feel differently from
| another group or even the majority.
| bombcar wrote:
| They're already running the risk vs other safer
| alternatives - even if just smaller silos.
|
| Sure if you give it away for free they'll be there - but if
| you're trying to sell it you need to convince them (or more
| likely get it illegal to not use one).
| phkahler wrote:
| Um yeah, because when I was a kid my grandfather let us ride
| in the grain collection cart. That was basically a large
| hopper on wheels with a funnel shape on the bottom to feed
| the grain elevator in the barn. We rode out to the fields.
| When the harvesters were full they'd come and "pour" a load
| into the wagon with kids in it. Buried my brothers from the
| waist down IIRC. Fun stuff. Safe and smart thing to let kids
| do? Nope.
|
| There are a lot of people with lower standards for safety
| like the PP indicated. They're not all wrong.
| jcims wrote:
| Come on man, you don't need to be this rude about a
| disagreement. You didn't even attempt to contest the primary
| claim, that farmers aren't going to flock like lemmings to a
| product that sells safety as its primary benefit.
|
| 'Dangerous' is contextual...if the risks of a task can be
| mitigated with some basic safety process, is it still
| dangerous? Getting into a grain bin is like rock
| climbing...go commando and you're playing with death, go in
| with the right process and gear and you'll be fine. Is it
| still 'dangerous' then?
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Not an expert on grain but in general vibration will aerosolize
| particles (preferentially the smallest ones) and it's _amazing_
| what will burn when you aerosolize it as a fine powder.
| crooked-v wrote:
| A Wikipedia article on the subject:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion
|
| Anything even mildly combustible can make a pretty big
| fireball.
| tyingq wrote:
| Powdered coffee creamer makes impressive fireballs with the
| distinctive mushroom cloud shape.
| tim333 wrote:
| Ah so it does - video: https://youtu.be/9pP7mTgX7iw?t=35
| bena wrote:
| That's mostly due to the physics of how it's being
| aerosolized.
|
| We used to take individual serving packets and do giant
| flame spikes. We got a large can of it and did the same
| thing from the top of a stairwell with someone on the
| bottom floor with a lighter and someone up top with the
| creamer.
|
| We hadn't fully considered the ramifications of our
| actions until we saw the fireball coming up at us.
|
| But basically, even without the fire, it would have made
| the mushroom cloud.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's one thing to take your safety into your own hands when
| it's your backyard. It's another thing to decline to implement
| procedures and safety measures that put someone else's life at
| risk.
|
| The romantic notion of the old man and his sons wringing out an
| existence on the family 40 is rapidly disappearing. Most of the
| grain production in the US is from massive farming corporations
| with tens of thousands of acres. At that kind of farm, there's
| a company mission statement that you hope has "Safety First"
| somewhere. There's someone in an office looking at hazards
| their workers encounter and ensuring they're OSHA-compliant,
| and doing risk analyses to find the most effective way to
| reduce risk and maintain productivity. A few miles away,
| there's a farm hand considering climbing into the company grain
| bin not because he'll personally benefit from shipping a
| harvest, he's at a $10.25 hourly rate regardless of the content
| of the bin, but he needs this paycheck to avoid his house being
| foreclosed upon and there are no non-farming jobs within 40
| miles.
|
| It's the office worker who is responsible for dozens of grain
| bins, each containing a quarter million dollars worth of grain,
| who is deciding whether to risk someone else's life or buy
| equipment instead.
|
| I'm not in farming (though I have family who is), I'm in
| manufacturing automation, and the same safety guidelines apply.
| The risks I'm willing to take with my Sawzall in my backyard
| are not the same as what I can ask some minimum-wage line
| operator to stand in front of. That person doesn't really have
| a choice in the risks they're exposed to. I get to choose those
| risks, and I have a moral, ethical, and legal responsibility to
| minimize them. If there's a maintenance task that puts workers
| in a potentially dangerous area of the workcell, I'm not
| sending them in unprepared. I'm probably going to spend
| thousands on floor scanners, safety controllers, lockout/tagout
| energy shutoffs, and other risk mitigations to make it as safe
| as reasonably possible, and if I can skip those requirements
| and have a machine do the task instead that's an easy
| calculation to make.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most farms are not large corporate. It is one guy and the
| hired hand farming 3000 acres. Legally they are corporations,
| but it is still small
| Animats wrote:
| About 30 people a year are entrapped in grain bins. About half
| die. Generally, someone goes inside a grain bin only because
| something has gone wrong. Which is when it's most dangerous.
|
| [1] https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-
| death-4-ways-...
| [deleted]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that
| scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin
| performing tasks that no human should ever do.
|
| This felt like a particularly strong wording. Is it due to risk
| of drowning in grain? Or just an annoying task?
| bumby wrote:
| This article gives a good overview of the danger:
|
| https://www.farmprogress.com/grains/significant-number-grain...
| floren wrote:
| https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/hazard...
| tantalor wrote:
| > Last year, nationwide there were 38 grain entrapment cases
| with 23 of those leading to fatalities
|
| https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Grain-bin-
| accident...
|
| Obviously these are low numbers compared to general
| population, but as a share of people who would actually enter
| a grain bin in the first place I would guess its high enough
| to matter.
| omnicognate wrote:
| > "After hearing some farmers talk about how they've lost a
| loved ones or how they themselves have gotten injured, I got
| really passionate about the project," Zents says.
| jerf wrote:
| Adding to the Hacker News Impromptu Grain Bin Education Hour, a
| Smarter Every Day video about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywBV6M7VOFU
| knodi123 wrote:
| Why did they decide to name it after a horribly destructive
| pest that plagues owners of grain silos?
|
| Would the Roomba have been as successful if it was named the
| iCockroach?
| RankingMember wrote:
| The Beatles did alright!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| People like some beetles. Weevils are always bad.
| ortusdux wrote:
| In 2019, 67 incidents of grain entrapment took place, of which
| 39 were fatal.
|
| https://dailyyonder.com/grain-bin-accidents-and-deaths-risin...
| jxramos wrote:
| The wiki image is pretty telling
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_entrapment
|
| Does not look fun at all
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQGfA-0yhk
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(page generated 2021-06-10 23:01 UTC)