Robotic Pest Control

[TexasT]

Almonds today, pigeons and starlings in the future? I imagine that the technology will have to advance quite a bit before something like this is ready to tackle a dairy farm, but who knows?

Full story: https://www.motortrend.com/news/insighttrac-autonomous-agricultural-mummy-robot/

Excerpt: "Lights ablaze, the drone tank stalks its targets. Its sensors create a 3D map of the environment, and its twin turrets whir as they bring their barrels to bear on the mummies hiding in the trees. With an almost anticlimactic "pfft" a tiny, biodegradable pellet strikes the mummy, knocking it to the ground. The process repeats until the target area is devoid of mummies and the harmful worms they may carry. And if that sounds like a weird science fiction passage with some unusually normal details—Pellets? Trees?—it's not. This is a real tracked, turreted robot that serves a real purpose. But the mummies are … almonds."

 

[OldSpook]

Yeah if we automate enough stuff we won't need people anymore oh wait....

 

[hawkeye69]

Very interesting...

 

[dizzums]

'they' would likely become very interested in you if you armed a robot with a weapon .. i was actually interested in outfitting a fpv rc vehicle with a servo aimable action and remote monitored sight until i read somewhere theyd send the stiffs in the black suits after me for that lol ...

 

[SqrlHntr]

Queue the movie “Runaway” with Tom

Selleck and Gene Simmons. 

 

[buckyusn]

SqrlHntr - Excellent 80's movie reference!

 

[doubloon]

Almonds today, pigeons and starlings in the future? I imagine that the technology will have to advance quite a bit before something like this is ready to tackle a dairy farm, but who knows?

It depends on how they "taught" it to recognize the mummys.

The algorithms for recognition are fairly advanced. It could be as easy as feeding a lot of different images from a lot of different angles of the thing you want to be the target.

 

[Peashooter]

I think Naughty people have been remote operating weapons of some kind for a long time, even if this is very frowned upon if not even illegal even in places that are "relaxed" on the general area.

As i see it all it take is a universal PTZ mount that can carry your whatever, a camera put on the whatever / where ever on it, and a 4 - 5 G connection to make it accessible.

At least if things do not run around 4G would be fine, but the newfangled 5G will probably make that challenge go away

If your geekness level are high, the ability if modern CCTV cameras to auto track and zoom on things, you could probably tune into and take advantage of, and who say object / face tracking and recognition should be used in just 1 way. It is a scary world, even more so when some people think they will be able to legislate their way out of that fact.



Am i the only one thinking of the 1997 movie The Jacal with Bruce Willis ?