[Jedd]

Yes, the article is very much about agriculture, and all its attendant woes.

But we're not likely to see any story about a permaculture robot soon. Several years ago I started to (on paper) design a system to merely plan and track a permaculture-style farm/environment - and then abandoned it due to complexity beyond my capacity to model.

Monocultures in comparison are painfully simple things to manage - part of why they're so successful (commercially, at least).

[TaylorAlexander]

All I want to do is design robots for sustainable small and medium scale agriculture. I've been working on robotics my whole life, and am very interested in 3D printed robotics. I've designed a proof of concept 3D printed remote control car [1] and I think it could be possible to design a good robot for agricultural applications that people can build and repair themselves. I design open source electronics for robotics and think we'd all be better off if we owned shares in a community farm, and I want to make that kind of thing possible.

3.5 billion people on this Earth are poor farmers. If we can design functional open source agricultural robots that can be built by anyone with access to a $300 3D printer (and I think we can) we could have a bigger impact on the world than every new Silicon Valley startup from 2016.

There is a serious issue with the fact that capitalists don't make things for poor people, because they can't afford to buy the solutions. [2] I don't want that to stop me though, so I'm working hard to figure out ways of funding this project that are functional even in our capitalist world. I think I spend more time thinking about economics and social systems than I do about robotics, since the technical solutions are trivial compared to the problem of getting people to fund valuable non-profitable work. But I think that is possible too.

Right now I am working at a robotics startup and solving problems like 3D perception, behavior, team management, handling my own bullshit, etc. My 10 year plan is to have a functioning system for homesteading with robots.

I'm really trying to make this happen.

[1] http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/ [2] http://tlalexander.com/restless/

[hactually]

How are you finding the efforts? I'd be interested in knowing more about how you intend on pushing it forward.

Do you need funding, ideas, people?

[TaylorAlexander]

Currently I'm funding development from my company [1], which was originally funded off of Kickstarter and is now funded out of pocket until I can achieve profitability.

In the future I intend to tap in to crowd funding again, probably with a full robot as a development platform, and will check out grants and other sources of traditional investment.

I could use people, ideas, and funding, in that order. Funding is forever useful but I'm not willing to accept anything with strings attached at this point. I think I'm at a stage now where I've fleshed out a good enough basic plan that I need more people to work on it. I don't currently have bandwidth to organize much but I figure I will some time in 2017. For now I'd love to get a core group of people together to discuss the ideas, and see how we can develop it further.

The general idea is a zero marginal cost society. That is, one more day of society's needs can be serviced or produced at zero marginal cost. This would eliminate the need to work for survival as there would be nothing anyone strictly had to pay for. This requires that some technology be developed, and that a good reduced-consumption culture is fostered that values true freedom over endless consumption. The first incarnation would be an open source farming robot project that would allow small farms all over the world to support themselves with less of their labor devoted to farming. Millions of people could be freed up by open source automation they built themselves or purchased locally. Longer term this would be used to tell a story about how automation and openness can free all of us from the need to work.

If you want to chat more about this, my email is in my profile and on my website, below.

[1] FlutterWireless.com

[repliculture]

I agree completely. That said, even in row-crop systems there's an incredible amount that could be done to build in more functional ecological complexity. For example, see Matt liebman's work at Iowa State.

[eru]

Does permaculture actually work? So far I've only seen some hippies take it seriously..

[beardicus]

> Does permaculture actually work?

You'll need to be more specific.

> So far I've only seen some hippies take it seriously.

There's a lot of that, sure. But in my experience, out of all the general nonsense going on in the world of organic agriculture, permaculturists were the most likely to avoid anti-scientific horse shit. That is perhaps not saying much, to be honest.