<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body><div>Flame cultivator in action</div><div>https://youtu.be/PuuSJf8JHq4</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div id="composer_signature"><div style="font-size:85%;color:#575757" dir="auto">Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S® 6, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone</div></div><div><br></div><div style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><!-- originalMessage --><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: David Anderson <davida@smu.edu> </div><div>Date: 12/6/16 12:20 AM (GMT-06:00) </div><div>To: John Swindle <swindle@compuserve.com>, dprglist@lists.dprg.org </div><div>Subject: Re: [Dprglist] Seeing the RoboColumbus cones </div><div><br></div></div>
Flame cultivator. Awesome. I googled "cotton farm flame
cultivator" and came up with this:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://flameengineering.com/pages/agricultural-flaming-guide">https://flameengineering.com/pages/agricultural-flaming-guide</a><br>
<br>
Invented by one Price McLemore in 1938. Clever. I want to see one
in action!<br>
<br>
cheers<br>
dpa<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/05/2016 11:28 PM, John Swindle
wrote:<br>
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<div>Dave,<br>
<br>
Great stuff. Thanks for setting me straight on the
already-uniqueness of the orange cones.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.)<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Good stuff. Back to slowly formulating now.<br>
<br>
John Swindle<br>
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