rail & gantry bot

This is actually a 3D printer, but replace the print head with a couple of general purpose robotic arms and you've got the makings of a gardening robot.

the empowerment of small-scale industrial designers

This Wired video discusses how easy it has become to get ahold of custom parts. Not mentioned, but quite obviously working away, is a 3D printer, building up a bust using deposited material.

This ability to get custom parts economically means that individuals and small companies can go where only large companies could realistically go before, and should infuse new energy into the culture of small scale experimentation, which was already showing renewed signs of life over the last decade or so.

This is very hopeful!

the application of "elegance" to machine behavior

We all have some idea of what "elegance" means, whether our notion of it is tied up with silky evening dresses, polished wood and brass, chandeliers and stained glass windows, exotic carpets, and expensive sports cars, or with youthful bodies that are tanned and fit, knowing the local language well enough to use it sparingly with assurance, being appropriately dressed for the weather, good posture, fluid movement, a varied diet of moderate proportions, giving every task as much time as it requires, and so on.

Applying the notion of elegance to machine behavior may resonate for some and not for others. What could it possibly mean, elegant machine behavior, wouldn't that be a contradiction in terms?

In this piece in another blog, I suggest that Apple should get into robotics, partly because to fail to do so would be to leave the largest looming growth market to others, and partly because I believe the company has something to contribute, something relating to elegance. I think Apple would set a high standard for machine behavior, and then exceed it, providing a tangible example of first-order elegance.

I say "first-order elegance" to suggest that there is also a "second-order" or "meta-elegance" that looks beyond present behavior to its ultimate effects. For example, formality may appear elegant, but if children are subjected to it all the time they may fail to develop emotional intelligence, an inelegant result.

As applied here, it is second-order or meta-elegance that is more important. It matters far less whether machines that tend land appear deft in their actions than whether the result of those actions appears more garden or desert-like. That's not to say that first-order elegance is unimportant. Efficient movement, of the entire machine and of its parts, is an important aspect of cost-effectiveness, but efficiently producing a undesirable result gains nothing.

I believe that second-order elegance is achievable in this context, that machines can be programmed to understand complex living systems and nurture them, while raising food and fiber for market in their midst. If I didn't believe that I would never have bothered trying to explain this vision of a greener future founded on robotics.

a patent, its implications, and their implications

The post that initially appeared here has been moved to Lacy Ice + Heat, which is where I meant to put it in the first place.

precise air-stream control

References to fictional, mystical warriors notwithstanding, this could actually be useful.

contrasting two robotic developments

The first is an autonomous agricultural robot that you can actually buy, or will be able to soon. It runs on gas and will cost around $100,000 when it becomes available early next year. FHI claims the machine can grow fruit and vegetables independently, although this is difficult to imagine based on the one available photo.

The second is the combination of a robotic hand possessing touch sensitivity and quick, flexible movement with a fast vision system, allowing some rather amazing manipulations of objects (check out the video!).

Of the two, the latter provides me far more hope for the future of robotic land management. A pair of hands like that, mounted on comparably quick arms, themselves mounted on a mobile platform, could be expected to cover every square foot of a several acre plot, every day, performing mechanical operations like planting, weeding, pruning, and harvesting. This represents a significant head start on the necessary hardware.

It's becoming clear that the hardware development will pretty much take care of itself, as basic abilities like this are developed and combined. The software may require more focused effort; probably will.

Le Petit Prince takes attentiveness to an extreme

Are your plants suffering from lack of attention? Perhaps this little robot is what you need. Unfortunately, you'll need a few thousand of them if you plan to do any serious gardening.