Time and progress waits for no hippie.
From POPSCI, 9/20/11. "Flemish engineers have announced a new self-driving
tractor whose precision rivals that of a human driver. This
could mean drastically lower operating costs for farmers, and
a step towards automated agriculture. The tractor...can automatically adjust
its speed and turning radius during its pre-programmed route
over a field. Previous driving systems required manual calibration for hard and soft terrain settings. The new tractor anticipates wheel slippage based on the observed terrain and adjusts its speed and turning rate to compensate. An automated system that could complete this task would fulfill the need for a highly trained operator, without the continuous high cost. FMTC and MeBioS will unveil their robot tractor on September 24 and 25 at the Annual International Agriculture and Horticulture Days of Mechanisation, in Oudennarde, Belgium.
Meanwhile, today's Wall Street Journal covers an American partnership between Kinze Manufacturing and Jaybridge Robotics that has also produced a self-driving tractor. The Kinze Autonomous Grain Cart system is designed to work in tandem with a human-operated harvester combine, driving alongside the combine and collecting harvested grain, with a surprisingly sprightly, even playful, gait. When the grain cart is full, the autonomous tractor hauls the crop to storage, and then returns to find the combine. Kinze and Jaybridge have also developed an autonomous planting system." Full article.
Posted by Kathy Meeh
5 comments:
What does this have to do with Pacifica?
Anon (1042) rather than continue to repeat that ongoing "what does this have to do with Pacifica" dull question, maybe ask yourself "why does nothing cutting-edge exist within the city limits of Pacifica?"
However, a global, long-range view: eventually the world is expected to peak at more than 10 billion people (latest projection). If Pacifica is not underwater, more people will be moving-in, and feeding people locally will be even more important. Thus, as food becomes more endangered, some of our city "open space" may become farm land. "Useful space" is a happy thought for some of us.
wow. that's a stretch. non sequitur, anyone?
Where to start? Her dot-to-dot work is breathtaking.
There's a direct link between heart-attack inducing fast foods and riptide! Are you eating that....?
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