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Comment by bewareandaware | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

> 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.

It's more an issue of either having an uneven depth after loading the bin, especially if the farmers are storing it all winter to sell the next summer. To do this you need to closely monitor the temperature and use the ventilation fans to bring the grain down in temp gradually to prevent spoiling. In order for that ventilation fans to do their job well the grain has to be a consistent depth.

Virtually all systems will produce uneven depth as the bins are loaded. You usually either end up with an upward cone in the middle from the pile, or an inverted cone when you're using a bin spreader to distribute the grain around the bin. The other time you can have an issue is if you have a powered spreader and forget to turn it on and load the bin unevenly on one side, which could end up being a structural issue.

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.

Yep, that was my first thought as an outsider and of course it's already used in those bins, it's more heavy-duty, faster, probably more expensive to install but more effective than a small robot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRISXr_euWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vm5jSAmVe0

They still have to get inside sometimes (less than without them) to fix it but it's the same with the robot if it's get stuck or battery dies.

The first video perfectly illustrates how the majority of grain bins in Northern California are configured, mostly for storing rice and wheat. I grew up on our family farm and we have several grain bins. They contain a row of augers at the top, with the row width being the radius of the grain bin. The augers almost reach the floor and spin to "stir" the grain, and the entire row slowly rotates around the top. We called them "stirs" [sic] and they were installed 35 and 45 years ago, so it's definitely not a new concept. Very simple and very effective. Grain bins there also have large fans and heaters at the base, which we just called "dryers". Between the stirs and the dryers our area didn't have any suffocation or explosion incidents that I remember, but we knew those were risks and we were careful if we had to go inside full grain bins. It seems like more of an issue in the Midwest with corn and soybeans, and taller silos.

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.

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.

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