[Dprglist] Seeing the RoboColumbus cones

[Steve Edwards]

Flame cultivator in actionhttps://youtu.be/PuuSJf8JHq4

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-------- Original message --------From: David Anderson <davida at smu.edu> Date: 12/6/16  12:20 AM  (GMT-06:00) To: John Swindle <swindle at compuserve.com>, dprglist at lists.dprg.org Subject: Re: [Dprglist] Seeing the RoboColumbus cones 

    Flame cultivator.  Awesome.  I googled "cotton farm flame
    cultivator" and came up with this:

    

    https://flameengineering.com/pages/agricultural-flaming-guide

    

    Invented by one Price McLemore in 1938.   Clever.  I want to see one
    in action!

    

    cheers

    dpa

    

    

    On 12/05/2016 11:28 PM, John Swindle
      wrote:

    
    
      
      
        Dave,

           

          Great stuff. Thanks for setting me straight on the
          already-uniqueness of the orange cones.

           

          But I'm still not making my point (largely because I'm still
          slowly formulating it). At the same time, I get your point,
          which is: Go and do it! But vision-related stuff is just not
          interesting for me to pursue.

           

          More of my point: It's not to look for, say, an orange cone,
          but to look for, say, a plastic thing or a rubber thing or a
          wood (or non-wood) thing. Unique in the arena and likely
          unique in a large unconstrained space.

           

          My interest in this is to build a robot that weeds the yard. I
          suspect that it is insufficient to look at leaf shapes, and I
          suspect that different plants have other signatures that will
          be easier to detect, as with the Earth sciences satellites
          that see what kind of trees are in a forest.

           

          When I saw a root heater weed killer for sale (basically a
          soldering iron on a stick), I got interested in having a
          gadget wander about the yard, selectively cooking the roots of
          undesired plants. A vinegar spray works also, but the root
          heater is more precise. (A flame cultivator is more dramatic
          though. We had those on the cotton farm.)

           

          You say we often build stuff that is purpose-built to win an
          arbitrary contest. In this case, I am looking for something
          that serves as a sensor for something beyond color and
          shape differences. It would be great if it involved sound!
          Talk to the weeds.

           

          I thought we developed sight for visible light because that's
          what gets through the atmosphere. Water has a big impact on
          the atmosphere as well.

           

          And so a UV sensor would be OK for a robot because it would
          either be designed to not get burned up by UV, or we wouldn't
          care that the sensor only lasted a few years. We try to
          anthropomorphize things too much, building our own limitations
          into our creations.

           

          Good stuff. Back to slowly formulating now.

           

          John Swindle

           
        

           
      
    
    

  
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