Rick, I did not edit out your reponses with any purpose other than keeping it
brief. (I also take every opportunity to do "top-posting" to keep the list
spiced up!)

I have some friends who are doing "precision agriculture" research and they
are using computer vision to assess the health of crops and to do targeted
administration of nutrients and other chemicals. They fly drones to collect
images, process them in near real-time, etc, etc. All this is heavily leveraging
on Linux, and there are cameras with R-Pis on board the drones, etc. Then there
is the coputer vision part that uses libraries and other custom software that
essentially runs on our favourite OS.

There are two companies, I hear, that are interested in using the technology
locally. I do not know the people involved beyong the UofM researchers.

I am more interested in aquaponics and in that type of automation, and I am
largely against grain-agriculture, which is very damaging to the environment.
(I am not soliciting a discussion or argument on this topic.)


On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 08:30:31PM -0500, Rick Engebretson wrote:
> 
> I'll resume my linux advocacy in spite of your editing.
> 
> Many farmers now rely on GPS and computer control of every square foot 
> of cropland. That's a lot of linux. And the crops aren't Darwin's idea 
> of evolution. Automation is on a fast growth track.
> 
> Cars are more than a little intelligent these days. With major changes 
> to drive train and fuels. That, too, is a lot of linux. Energy systems 
> is Elon Musk's interest.
> 
> If you hadn't cut out my postings it would be clear, all I'm trying to 
> do is shift some focus to these actual linux science topics. Science too 
> easily gets deleted from political discussion.
>