Biggest orchards could soon use robot fruist pickers.

It’s a fruist. ;)

OK
First laugh of the week.
Thanks.

PS I did pick apples.

Trees have to be grown on trellises for this to work. There will be apple and tree damage. This will be made up by volume and scale of operation, I guess.

Running the numbers on one of the robots, 4 to 12 arms and 10000 apples per hour, is only about 4 times faster than an illegal. In perfect conditions.

Only practical in large scale operations, it would seem. And you would still need humans to pick the fruit that is more difficult to reach.

And by the way, there are other hand-intensive tasks in apple growing.

Thinning (can be approximated by chemical thinning sprays).

Pruning (can be approximated by giant mechanical hedge shears).

Picking is a critical node, exploited by unions. Getting fruist to market first is prime price. Getting it before it rots or freezes is survival. Timely harvest is the make-or-break culmination of a whole year’s(or more) investment and effort.

This is not new:

Deportee
Woody Guthrie

The crops are all in
And the peaches are rotting
The oranges piled up
In their creosote dumps
You’re flying ‘em back
To the Mexican border
To spend all their money
To wade back again

Good bye to my Juan
Goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos Jesus why Maria
You won’t have a name
When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you
Will be “deportees”

Some of us are illegal
And others not wanted
Our work contract’s up
And we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws
Like rustlers, like thieves

Good bye to my Juan
Goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos Jesus why Maria
You won’t have a name
When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you
Will be “deportees”

The skyplane caught fire
Over Los Gatos Canyon
A fireball of lightning
Shook all our hills
Who are all these friends
Who are scattered like dried leaves
The radio said
They were just “deportees”

Good bye to my Juan
Goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos Jesus why Maria
You won’t have a name
When you ride the big airplane
All they will call you
Will be “deportees”

They are not true replacements until they go to a sanctuary city and kill an innocent girl!!!

Slavery and the use of Hispanic migrants both have the same effects in the regions they’re used in: they set back technological advancement tremendously. You don’t automate cheap labor; you automate labor that is hard to find. The cotton-pickers in the South were in abundant supply, so there was no incentive for the South to industrialize and accept more efficient manufacturing processes. The same is true with Hispanic migrants in the agriculture industry. After the Civil War, the South was basically a backwater...

You're right.

Slave labor HURT the South - AND if Lincoln hadn't stopped it, slave labor would have turned the United States into a third world type hellhole.

Slaves didn't build this country - slave labor worked to destroy industrial grown.

Same with cheap labor from Mexico - they've held back innovation. Trump was one of the few people to see the connection...

Slavery and the use of Hispanic migrants both have the same effects in the regions they’re used in: they set back technological advancement tremendously. You don’t automate cheap labor; you automate labor that is hard to find. The cotton-pickers in the South were in abundant supply, so there was no incentive for the South to industrialize and accept more efficient manufacturing processes. The same is true with Hispanic migrants in the agriculture industry. After the Civil War, the South was basically a backwater...

You're right.

Slave labor HURT the South - AND if Lincoln hadn't stopped it, slave labor would have turned the United States into a third world type hellhole.

Slaves didn't build this country - slave labor worked to destroy industrial growth.

Same with cheap labor from Mexico - they've held back innovation. Trump was one of the few people to see the connection...