I don't think so.
We need a new law that merges baumol's cost disease and wright's law.
“Before the robot can be deployed on farms, the computer vision and positioning technologies that would let it find and reach for berries on the plant still need to be developed.”
Keep your long sleeved shirts and overalls handy, because robots are not going to pick your blackberries for you anytime soon.
But it will be cool when they pull it off. I was just pondering the automation of blackberry picking, as they are starting to come on in the PNW, and I tire of getting scratched up.
It's nice to dream about stuff we could maybe one day have I guess...
- demos done in a lab controlled environment without the crazy things that happen in a real world.
- no humans nearby so none of the safety features that would be needed should this thing work alongside/near humans.
- no regards for economics, expensive vision models, expensive hardware, no consideration for maintenance and repair costs
If you want the essence of this technique look at any university press release about fusion technology.
This is the #1 killer every time.
You will always find the most efficient farm machinery to be the least human-like in its design principles. The more it looks like something out of Mad Max the better.
Unless we come up with a machine like the combine harvester for blackberries, no one is going to be interested.
Good news! https://airharvesters.com/
Clarkson's farm taught me that this is already a thing.
Some berries get damaged, yes. Some leaves and twigs get through. They're separated out by a very fast vision-based sorting machine before packing.[1] That's been standard technology for a decade or so.
Apple picking is still in the R&D stage.[2] Cost needs to come down to $0.02 per pick.
It's great to see startups in this area, but the thing has to work. There are too many failed ag robotics startups.[3] Ask "could you pressure-wash this thing"? If there are wires, electronics, and bearings exposed, it's still experimental.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ica3FLAvPas
[2] https://goodfruit.com/lots-of-bots-video
[3] https://www.futurefarming.com/tech-in-focus/field-robots/cha...
Is that a necessary requirement? I mean, that would probably damage current harvesters, who are human people.
I mean, there are lots of parts of cars where pressure washing would probably force fluid into the bearings.
Might that not apply to hydraulic, pneumatic or electronic systems too?
(I do get what you're saying though)
Unless you need delicate sensors which need direct contact to samples to work.
Maybe it's not a complete necessity, but generally it's gonna be mixed in with big farm equipment that is power washed. The more you have to "coddle" the equipment the less cost effective it'll be for farmers.
Farm workers generally know how to wash themselves. Still I'd wage good money farm hands have used power washers on each other. Probably work well to clean off work coveralls!
Also, our wash down hoses were basically power washers, but like 10x the volume.
Strictly it needn't be if it offers an even better solution, but, realistically, what startup trying to introduce a new technology (that isn't cleaning technology) has time to also develop a novel way to clean things? It is such an unlikely scenario that it isn't worth considering.
Oh? I find my human-based process for separating grain to be of the very same principles as the combine. The specific mechanics aren't exactly the same. For example a combine has a fan, while I have lungs. But the principle — using airflow to aid in separation — is the same.
The sprayer is the only piece of equipment on my farm I can think of that employs a different principle to do the job as compared to how I would do the job by hand.
Although when it comes to precedents, "robots" have (luckily) taken many jobs in agriculture already.
There's no incentive for the capital class to massively invest in fruit picking robotics when there are tens of millions of exploitable humans on the planet that you can use do the same job for dirt cheap.
The economic balance needs to change for change to happen.
That's why the capital class is overinvesting in AI, because that can potentially replace the higher paid jobs where the labor has leverage and turn them into similarly exploitable workers.
Maybe commercial pickers need to optimise differently and could pick every day and get every berry at its absolute peak? But I doubt that's the state of the art with human pickers at the moment: they get paid minimum wage and are assessed primarily on the weight they pick.
They have not even developed the piece that finds and positions the hand.
>Before the robot can be deployed on farms, the computer vision and positioning technologies that would let it find and reach for berries on the plant still need to be developed.
"Train routes across Germany have been a bit congested recently."
or a pig
We need to automate away the boring/hard jobs.
Could. But does it ? There are a lot of news with "could" lately. Damn, even the world "could" be a better place.
>> Before the robot can be deployed on farms, the computer vision and positioning technologies that would let it find and reach for berries on the plant still need to be developed.
Note also that there are no photos of the robot. I think that's because it hasn't even been built yet, let alone deployed.
Prof John Clark likely has invented the berries you've ate: https://news.uark.edu/articles/63163/arkansas-fruit-breeder-...
Harvest costs for fruit are an incredibly important consideration for farms and out of the thousands of potential fruits you could eat, the commercial winners have to be profitable.
There are some awesome opportunities for robotics, computer vision, and ML in agriculture. And if you can reduce harvest costs by 75% like this approach for blueberries, farmers have more market options to select better flavor qualities because the harvest quality goes up: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/impact/innovative-harvest-...
This paragraph is weird because the article focuses on blackberries, and none of the example is even remotely close
MangoToupe•13h ago
disillusioned•13h ago
burnt-resistor•12h ago