Robotics Firm Promises A 'Lights Out' Orchard
from the robofruit dept
The question "But who will pick our fruit?" is often heard during debates over unskilled immigration, as if that were somehow the crux of the issue. But a robotics company is looking to obviate this point by developing robots that can harvest orchards automatically without the need for direct human involvement. The company claims that while others have tried this in the past, it's developed a new efficient mechanism for efficiently finding and plucking fruit off trees. It's great when technology can bring efficiency and cost savings to business, and it would be great for farmers if they could avoid the precarious legal situation involved with hiring illegal immigrants (which many do in order to stay cost competitive). But there's good reason to be skeptical. Former GM CEO Roger Smith famously envisioned a "lights out" factory (so-called because a factory that employed only robots would have no need for lighting), but the vision never materialized under his watch. Undoubtedly, robotics has advanced in the nearly two decades since Smith was at the helm of GM, but as steady and consistent as factories are supposed to be, the world's top manufacturers haven't embraced this idea. There's probably room to make fruit picking more efficient, but at this point, completely getting rid of pickers sounds like a pipe dream.
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Not so easy...
It will be interesting to see how they plan to make this work and be cost effective.
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The first step...
I welcome our Silicon masters!
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Re: The first step...
As far as cost effective, a farmer can pay millions of dollars to install this robotic whatever, or pay Pedro 35 cents an hour to do the same thing. I may be a skeptic, but I think illegal labor is going to be around for a while even if this thing works.
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Re: Re: The first step...
Realistically there is no one in Oregon (at least not working on a farm of any significant size) paying under minimum wage. It's not worth the lawsuits. What they do most of the time instead is piece work. Generally they place a value of like $.50 per container of berries. Well, if your slow you average $5 an hour, if you fast you can average $12 an hour. A lot of farms prefer that because they don't care if you earn more per hour if your productivity matches. Just a little FYI.
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"And every now and then someone will die"
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Re:
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If there is a flaw in their notion, I'd say its that they have visited a single company to get their solution. A contest that attracts a range of solutions would be more likely to net one or two workable solutions.
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ai, ai, yai !
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Don't be surprised to see these soon.
A recent breakthrough dealt with using one bot to ID all of the fruit, and a second bot to map the most efficient manner in retrieving said fruit.
The first attempts were trying to map and pick at the same time and that wasn't very efficient. We are closer to this than you guys may think.
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fruit mapping?
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Robomex
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wow...
anyways, history repeats itself...doesnt anyone remember the lessons about the cotton gin, industrial revolution, the steam engine, gun manufacturing, the term Luddites...
this cant be terribly shocking, by now we should be used to the idea of tasks getting mechanized. its been going on for hundreds of years.
as far as technology, we have plently of 3d mapping technology out there. we have machines that can be used in surgery. we have hydrolic systems that can navigate terrain without tilting its load. its not unfathomable to imagine these technologies merging to create a system to pick fruit.
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Old news
There are also similar machines that harvest coffee. Their used in Australia and Hawaii. The machines are adjusted to only harvest a vertical range on the plant that corresponds to the location of the ripest beans.
GM coffee plants are being developed that will ripen when activated so the entire plant can be harvested at once.
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