[throwaway0a5e]

Friendly reminder that people who deal with "unsafe by office worker standards" stuff day in and day out do not shovel money at you without critical thought just because you can portray your product as improving safety. These guys aren't wringing their hands and clutching their pearls over the thought of a dangerous job. They're finding a way to be careful and mitigate the risks of the worst outcomes and then getting the job done. To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them. It's just a task and like any other task you should approach it in a smart manner if you want the best results. Selling something as a safety improvement isn't that easy because the physics involved in bulk materials or heavy equipment are always going to hurt people who don't work smart given enough exposure and likewise the ROI of removing any one type of exposure is low.

Now, if the machine can all but eliminate the need for the manual job they might sell a few. Because farmers love when shit just magically works because the day only has so many hours in it and one less someone has to stop what you're doing to deal with.

On a more technical note, bulk dry goods can generally be persuaded to follow gravity if you give them a kick start with vibration. This approach has a bunch of pluses (the equipment is very reliable and typically you can resolve blockage by varying the frequency) but I don't know why it isn't used for grain (though it is used on the trucks and rail cars that transport grain). You typically see it in bulk material handling settings where you can't afford to stop the line and/or it's too dangerous to make someone clear a blockage manually so I assume it's a cost thing and farming margins aren't big enough. It seems like these guys went and invented a robot that solves a problem that has an existing solution. But the article doesn't mention why the existing solution doesn't get used for grain and why the new robot will. I get that it's a high level press release but I still wanna know.

[Baeocystin]

Speaking as someone who knows farmers- they do, in fact, consider going into the silo a dangerous task, because everyone knows some family that had someone die because of it. They do it anyway, because it needs to get done, but they are quite aware of the risk. Everything on a farm has to earn its keep in terms of ROI, and so will this robot. It may or may not be cost effective, and we'll see. But please don't downplay the very real danger, just because some folks have to manage it because of their job.

[nimbius]

"Blue-collar" worker here. safety is the first trade we learn in school and the first job we start at every site. Your real uphill battle with this thing isnt going to be safety, its repair. Can I fix it with a stick welder and parts from a Tractor Supply? If not, its just another John Deere money machine.

If you REALLY want farmers to use it, make it OPEN SOURCE.

[celticninja]

Doesn't have to be open source, just needs to be repairable on site, not in a week's time when someone comes out to it. In that time someone has to risk their life to do the job it should be doing.

[megablast]

Clearly not true. The safest thing you can do on a worksite is leave. But people still work there.

[bontaq]

It sure seems that way, across all the youtube farming channels I watch, one thing that ties them together is they do not like going into the silo and do consider it unsafe. I have no idea what OP is talking about besides their imagination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7oxLIP1RRo here's a whole episode about grain bin rescue training. They raised $60,000 for first responders in their grain bin safety campaign.

[the-pigeon]

The entire idea that "x workers don't care about safety" is just dumb.

Yes some individuals care less than they should. But every job has some people who are smart enough to value their own safety. And those people will seriously consider any device the significantly increases safety.

[tialaramex]

Humans (not any specific type of worker) are bad about risk versus convenience trade offs. They really like dangerous shortcuts as an example. Like, people who are on the clock, and they see there's a safe route to the work site, but if you cut down this steep embankment it's slightly quicker, although you might fall to your death... Humans will take that shortcut. Even though they're on the clock! They are risking death to save somebody else money, where is the sense in that? But that's not why they're doing it, they're doing it because it seems convenient. So we have to arrange things to make unsafe practices also inconvenient and then humans stop doing them. Put a fence along that steep drop, now you'd have to climb a fence and it's no longer a shortcut, so they use the safe route.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Humans (not any specific type of worker) are bad about risk versus convenience trade offs.

This is just a fancy way of calling people stupid because they don't do what you want.

Literally every subject you can think of is inundated with people complaining that the common man doesn't care enough or isn't doing it right.

"nice boat you've got there"

-no financial planner ever

[tialaramex]

> This is just a fancy way of calling people stupid because they don't do what you want.

Not people, humans, I'm sure some non-humans can get this right.

And it's not that they don't do what I want, they don't do what they want.

[neatze]

It is not only that, awareness plays crucial role in safety, there are numerous factors that negatively effects awareness, some factors might not be related to job at all, it might be "simple" commutative cognitive fatigue. Arguably, this issue is irrespective of training quality and/or understanding of job risks (smart), to large degree.

[dylan604]

>Yes some individuals care less than they should.

Is it really an amount of "care", or that some people just have an ability to not get bogged down by the scary stuff. There would be no X-Games at all if we were all wired the same. There are people that voluntarilly get off of their motorcycle at the apex of their jump to score some extra points. That's beyond insane to me, but to them it's part of the job.

[toomanybeersies]

Maybe I'm just a dirty socialist, but I don't really want to die in a preventable industrial accident, all because my employer didn't want to invest in workplace health and safety.

[Symbiote]

The alternatives suggested on [1] (from a different comment) are much cheaper: long poles, a safety harness, lock tag.

If farmers aren't already using those, why would they buy this?

[1] https://agfax.com/2019/02/18/grain-bins-sudden-death-4-ways-...

[bombcar]

> Consequences. Of the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2019, 47% were not wearing seat belts.

And I highly doubt half of those people were driving old cars with no seat belts.

If people can’t be arsed to use a simple safety tool it’s going to be a hard sell to build a robot.

Better would be to build a silo that has safety features built in and make it competitive on price.

[RobLach]

It looks more fun to use.

[rsync]

"To them it's no different than trying not to land on your ass trying to pin an implement to the tractor in the mud. Going into a silo or grain hopper is not a dangerous task to them."

I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin.

If you climb into an enclosed space with both burial and dust explosion hazards and your internal alarms aren't going off loud and strong ... you are, sadly, an idiot.

Most of the people I know who handle tasks like this are not idiots.

[phkahler]

Um yeah, because when I was a kid my grandfather let us ride in the grain collection cart. That was basically a large hopper on wheels with a funnel shape on the bottom to feed the grain elevator in the barn. We rode out to the fields. When the harvesters were full they'd come and "pour" a load into the wagon with kids in it. Buried my brothers from the waist down IIRC. Fun stuff. Safe and smart thing to let kids do? Nope.

There are a lot of people with lower standards for safety like the PP indicated. They're not all wrong.

[david-gpu]

> I have been on HN since 2012 and this comment is the dumbest shit I have ever seen posted here. By a fair margin.

Since you've been in HN so long, it may have been a while since you last had a chance to look at the guidelines. Here's a quick friendly reminder:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Thank you for contributing to this community.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[jcims]

Come on man, you don't need to be this rude about a disagreement. You didn't even attempt to contest the primary claim, that farmers aren't going to flock like lemmings to a product that sells safety as its primary benefit.

'Dangerous' is contextual...if the risks of a task can be mitigated with some basic safety process, is it still dangerous? Getting into a grain bin is like rock climbing...go commando and you're playing with death, go in with the right process and gear and you'll be fine. Is it still 'dangerous' then?

[rsync]

"'Dangerous' is contextual...if the risks of a task can be mitigated with some basic safety process, is it still dangerous? Getting into a grain bin is like rock climbing...go commando and you're playing with death, go in with the right process and gear and you'll be fine. Is it still 'dangerous' then?"

I think this is a flawed analogy.

Although I don't do much rock climbing, I do take part in some other high consequence recreational activities. I agree that some of these risks can be mitigated with equipment and safety measures and, in fact, I don't feel like I'm courting death.

The difference here is that these are activities I have tens of thousands of reps of. Further, I am regularly practicing these activities in totally safe environments. Finally, I have mental models of thousands of different routes and locations and conditions and settings upon which to draw.

Contrast this with (for instance) entering in, and working on, a grain silo. You will not have had thousands of reps of this activity. You will not have entered thousands of different grain silos. You will not have trained for decades in practice grain silos. This is a very high consequence activity that you will have very shallow mental maps of.

I think that's an important distinction.

It suggests that regardless of equipment and processes, one should enter into (high consequence activities one has shallow mental maps of) on very high alert.

[perl4ever]

Instead of using the word "idiot", I think it's probably better to describe people who refused to give up small scale farming over the course of the 20th century as...very stubborn, used to doing everything themselves to save money and ignoring risks (to themselves and family) that a big employer can't possibly get away with today.

If you've ever read "Farmer Boy" about Almanzo Wilder, there's a bit where his father is telling him, he can go and live in the city, apprentice to someone and make a good living, but be dependent on other people, or he can be a farmer, take more risks with the weather and everything else, but be independent.

[rsync]

"Instead of using the word "idiot", I think it's probably better to describe people ..."

Please re-read - I said:

"Most of the people I know who handle tasks like this are not idiots."

I was disputing my parents assertion that "... (things like this are) not a dangerous task to them." I think my parent is incorrect.

[perl4ever]

It's very common for (family) farmers to die in accidents like the article hints at. Not specifically related to grain bins, but in general due to working with hazardous equipment and chemicals and having no regard for labor and safety laws.

So, even if you didn't mean to, I think you called a lot of people idiots.

I was just trying to reframe it as, people who work for themselves rather than a corporation tend to take a lot more risk and settle for a lot less pay.

So if you know people like that, you'd know about the consequent misfortunes.

I'm not trying to be critical, really, what it comes down to is that if "most of the people [you] know" wouldn't take the risks that I associate with farmers, then it makes me wonder what sort of people they are. What context you are coming from.

My grandfather was a farmer. I don't know the details, but he died after a mishap cleaning something with gasoline. Not immediately. I read a news item once where a farmer was overcome by something with toxic fumes, and the whole family died in succession, each one going in to rescue the other. There was another about someone who got their arms ripped off while working alone and managed to get help.

[celticninja]

I agree. The first paragraph of the article contains their reasoning behind creating it. An experienced farmer asked them to create something so that he (and his children) never had to expose themselves to that risk again. They know it is dangerous, they may manage that risk but you are a fool if you think they would prefer to run the risk rather than find a safer alternative.

[mustacheemperor]

There is a post on the front page of reddit[0] today about the risks of grain entrapment, and that thread is also full of people with firsthand experiences of friends or relatives dying on farms from it.

[0]https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nwmect/til_t...

[Krasnol]

Interesting timing.

[exporectomy]

This thread is a hilarious game of "I'm better than you because I know real farmers". For some reason, certain occupations seem to bring out a sanctimonious attitude in people that nobody can understand it if they're not personally doing it themselves, combined with a failure to recognize that those occupationists are diverse and one person's personal friends might feel differently from another group or even the majority.

[baryphonic]

I must say, I find this response a bit odd. Just for reference, a billionaire US presidential candidate last year said[0]:

> I could teach anybody—even people in this room so no offense intended—to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.

I've seen this kind of attitude toward lower-status occupations from fellow engineers and other educated professional types, and I find it distasteful. Unlike some other occupations which also provoke a "sanctimonious attitude" (such as, say, education, despite almost all of us having extensive experience with it as a consumer or product or something), farming seems like a blind spot for almost all educated professionals. I know I'm profoundly ignorant of how all of the different types of food I eat are produced. Everything I learn about the field - and I'm not naturally interested in it - makes me feel even more uninformed about all of the factors that go into producing and distributing food. That indicates to me that farmers, whom we depend on, absolutely deserve some respect and deference. When a common sentiment among this class is that farming can be reduced to simply putting some dirt over a hole with a seed inside, knowing an actual farmer is probably pretty valuable, even if that farmer isn't representative of farmers as a whole. Farming seems to be one of the few occupations where this "sanctimonious attitude" seems justifiable.

[0]https://www.newsweek.com/mike-bloombergs-elitist-farming-com...

[celticninja]

It's not "I know..." It's "you are making stupid assumptions" and you haven't read the article.

[bombcar]

They’re already running the risk vs other safer alternatives - even if just smaller silos.

Sure if you give it away for free they’ll be there - but if you’re trying to sell it you need to convince them (or more likely get it illegal to not use one).

[LeifCarrotson]

It's one thing to take your safety into your own hands when it's your backyard. It's another thing to decline to implement procedures and safety measures that put someone else's life at risk.

The romantic notion of the old man and his sons wringing out an existence on the family 40 is rapidly disappearing. Most of the grain production in the US is from massive farming corporations with tens of thousands of acres. At that kind of farm, there's a company mission statement that you hope has "Safety First" somewhere. There's someone in an office looking at hazards their workers encounter and ensuring they're OSHA-compliant, and doing risk analyses to find the most effective way to reduce risk and maintain productivity. A few miles away, there's a farm hand considering climbing into the company grain bin not because he'll personally benefit from shipping a harvest, he's at a $10.25 hourly rate regardless of the content of the bin, but he needs this paycheck to avoid his house being foreclosed upon and there are no non-farming jobs within 40 miles.

It's the office worker who is responsible for dozens of grain bins, each containing a quarter million dollars worth of grain, who is deciding whether to risk someone else's life or buy equipment instead.

I'm not in farming (though I have family who is), I'm in manufacturing automation, and the same safety guidelines apply. The risks I'm willing to take with my Sawzall in my backyard are not the same as what I can ask some minimum-wage line operator to stand in front of. That person doesn't really have a choice in the risks they're exposed to. I get to choose those risks, and I have a moral, ethical, and legal responsibility to minimize them. If there's a maintenance task that puts workers in a potentially dangerous area of the workcell, I'm not sending them in unprepared. I'm probably going to spend thousands on floor scanners, safety controllers, lockout/tagout energy shutoffs, and other risk mitigations to make it as safe as reasonably possible, and if I can skip those requirements and have a machine do the task instead that's an easy calculation to make.

[bluGill]

Most farms are not large corporate. It is one guy and the hired hand farming 3000 acres. Legally they are corporations, but it is still small

[LeifCarrotson]

You're technically correct, the most common farm is small, but the large farms are so much larger that the average acre is on a large farm. Not sure I explained that clearly - it's similar to how if there was a group of people consisting of 99 minimum wage workers and a billionaire, the average person is poor, but the average dollar is held by the billionaire. Accidents are more closely correlated per bushel, not per farm.

[AbrahamParangi]

Not an expert on grain but in general vibration will aerosolize particles (preferentially the smallest ones) and it's amazing what will burn when you aerosolize it as a fine powder.

[crooked-v]

A Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion

Anything even mildly combustible can make a pretty big fireball.

[tyingq]

Powdered coffee creamer makes impressive fireballs with the distinctive mushroom cloud shape.

[tim333]

Ah so it does - video: https://youtu.be/9pP7mTgX7iw?t=35

[bena]

That's mostly due to the physics of how it's being aerosolized.

We used to take individual serving packets and do giant flame spikes. We got a large can of it and did the same thing from the top of a stairwell with someone on the bottom floor with a lighter and someone up top with the creamer.

We hadn't fully considered the ramifications of our actions until we saw the fireball coming up at us.

But basically, even without the fire, it would have made the mushroom cloud.

[lurquer]

Growing up around silos, I can tell you... of all the dangerous stuff on a farm, that was the one thing that folks warned about. They are death traps, particularly because it’s so damn tempting to climb up and get in. (As a kid, anyway.) Or, even as an adult, when you’re emptying it, it’s so tempting to step inside (on the bottom) and shovel that last big mound on the side down towards the center. (And, then get overwhelmed in an avalanche if the big stable mound isn’t as stable as you think.)

I don’t think vibrating would work. Some silos are several stories tall, and the grain isn’t rigid... in fact, it can be quite moist. Point being, vibrations won’t travel very far.

[jcims]

I've seen lots of people calling OPs statement stupid, but nobody actually countering the primary claim in the very first sentence.

The likelihood that your rank and file farmer is going to drop $5K on this thing when they know in the back of their mind that every time it fails they are going to have to get back into the grain bin anyway, is very very low.

[fiftyfifty]

I've been involved in several IT projects and companies in the agricultural industry over the years. Most people that try to solve agricultural problems with tech are surprised to find that there is far less money in agriculture than they expected and farmers are far less willing to part with it on unproven tech.

[notatoad]

There is money in agriculture, but it's not the same sort of money that tech people are used to. Big tech thrives on dumb money - people are willing to make bets on unproven tech in the hopes that it will either make their lives easier or make them look like they are "innovating" to their customers or their bosses.

the medium-scale farms (~10-20 permanent staff + labourers) i have experience with will have no problem making 6-figure purchases if they can do the math and see that the capital investment will pay off in a reasonable amount of time. the money is there, it's just not gambled. there's no value for a farmer in the appearance of innovation.

[happytoexplain]

Your first two sentences are pretty unfriendly. I'm not trying to be snide.

[ClumsyPilot]

I don't think so - I got burned precisely by this -> people that work with danger regularly are actually used to it and do not faint or fall to you lap if you offer some marginal mitigation

Sometimea even to their own detriment

[bombcar]

A solution that removes some minor but commonly encountered inconvenience is an easier sell than one that removes a rare but fatal one.

So a setup that keeps the steering wheel cool even in the hot sun may sell better than a device that prevents the tractor from flipping over on you.

[xboxnolifes]

I feel that hackernews readers need the blunt reminder once in a while.

[legitster]

Preach.

On the internet it's very easy for people to talk themselves into incredibly high standards for anything. But in real life most people are pretty astute at marginal trade-offs between risk and cost.

While it may look like you have a product with no competitors that will save lives, your actual competitor is "being slightly more careful" and it's free and people still aren't buying that. You still have to justify the value.

[msrenee]

Being slightly more careful doesn't really help in this situation. They are slightly more careful. The smart ones are very careful. It's intrinsically dangerous. Someone suggested a tag out system and that just makes it clear to me they don't understand the mechanics at hand. Why more of them don't wear a harness, tie off, and the buddy system, I don't know, but that's about the only real way you can recover if you get sucked in.

[bombcar]

Being slightly more careful just is using the harness, etc. they don’t do it because it takes time and they’ve done this before and it’ll be fine this time.

[msrenee]

It also takes 2 guys and a complete halt of the process. If you could just drop something in there that would do the job, that may actually save money over the long run. Especially if you could keep dispensing while it's working.

[quickthrowman]

If anyone is wondering why it takes two, part of it is suspension trauma: https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2017/01/01/Suspension-Trauma....