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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

What about putting them on an electrified wire? String a grid of them over the fields for motion and for power. Power the grid with solar.

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Any kind of wired setup would interfere with other tractors they use in the field. Fertilization, and eventually harvesting.

I’m not sure why people are inventing more complicated solutions when this robot seems to handle the job quite well without them. It covers 20 acres in a day, you can likely keep 100+ acres weed free continuously without any other special gimmicks.

I think most people here don't run large farms, and actually want something for their garden.

It stands to reason that if you're going to be running wires over the entire field you wouldn't need flying drones so much as you would need cameras on wheels (like they have at football stadiums).

If the camera sees the correct spectra for a known weed it can drop down and get a closer inspection then mark the spot or just burn the weeds with an attached laser.

I assume the crawler is necessary because--in order for the laser to work--the weeds need to be identified very early as they emerge from the ground. You might not be able to spot them at such an early stage from above without expensive optics.

Yes totally agree on the benefits of early detection — easier to identify eg. once the desired crop is larger than, say 10mm, then just fire the laser on anything green that is less than 2mm, adjust those parameters as required as the crop matures, also getting them early means less laser energy required to kill it, longer battery life, larger acreage covered

Wire is too expensive for that. You need thick wire to hold itself up without posts every few meters, which in turn means it is more expensive than the normal house wires. Not that it couldn't be done, but it is too expensive.

Now there is opportunity to have one long wire that the tractor reels in/out as it makes passes. This isn't a flying drone, but that isn't really needed for anything other than cool.

No, wire gantry would be very much ok for this solution.

You don't need wires to be that rigid for that.

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