Conversation

Nice tethered-drone tentacle hack… lots of possibilities for this form factor if you can accommodate the tether. Endurance becomes irrelevant and payload goes up since no battery needed and that’s often the heaviest bit. I want this got my mansion orchard
Quote Tweet
Fruit farmers' most difficult task is organizing the havest. Tevel's drones select, pick and box only ripe fruits with the help of an AI working day and night [full video: buff.ly/3APys9i]
Embedded video
0:45
1.1M views
Replying to
once you have a tether you can also do more stable flying by keeping tension via a winch on the line. look at how sloppily/slowly they navigate back. you could just winch them back while the propellers push out.
1
2
Replying to
That depends I think. The tension vector might lower the center of gravity and increase stability, or move it sideways and destabilize. But if you can control the tension, you can probably design the algorithm to make use of it where useful, let it go stack where it would hurt.
1
Replying to
I’m not sure it would be? Articulated arms are very heavy and need high-torque drives or messy hydraulics. The driven load is high. Drones are actually pretty efficient I think. I saw a paper showing they can be more efficient than trucks for deliveries under many conditions.
1
Show replies
Replying to
margins are already low and capex seems high, not to mention operating and maintenance costs. probably works better if u rent these drones but farming is very seasonal and sharing would be hard
1
Replying to
Given the very linear and long aged nature of vineyards/orchards, wouldn't inductive tracks buried between the trees be an option here? Or does the fact you still need a battery to inductively charge mitigate any advantage?