Our robot harvests cotton by reaching out and plucking it, like a lizard’s tongue snatching flies

The Conversation ^ | February 13, 2024 8:20am EST

[Magnum44]

[brianr10]

I wonder if there is any crop that can’t be machine harvested, getting rid of most farm labor.

[Theoria]

The neoluddites will have their day in the future. Politicians will have a easy vote speaking to the plight of Ned Ludd.

[SaveFerris]

Just wait until it becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. August 29, 1997......

[VTenigma]

Skynet is now active.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

This sounds really cool and sounded promising until I got to...

1. Our harvester picked cotton at a speed of 8.8 seconds per boll. If we can decrease this required time to 0.3 seconds and increase the robot’s efficiency to pick at least 90% of the cotton bolls it can reach, it will compete with a mechanical harvester.

Just a 97% improvement and they'll compete with modern harvesters. They are SO close!

2 Great potential for the robot in major cotton-producing countries such as China, India, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, where cotton is currently picked by hand, often by women and children and sometimes under abusive conditions.

Freat, throw all those millions of people out of work. Then they can adopt the USA model of giving everybody lots and lots of FREE MONEY. We have plenty...maybe we can send them some tens of billions that are just lying around.

[Reno89519]

SEND ALL MIGRANT WORKERS—Legal and Illegal Home. Replace them with robotics and Americans.

[Deaf Smith]

What percentage of the public would be “triggered” reading your link?

[TornadoAlley3]

Pictures of cotton should have a trigger warning in the title.

[Red Badger]

Hopefully none..................

[catnipman]

let’s see now: IF they can make a robot pick 29 times faster than the prototype, AND that can make a robot that picks twice as much cotton that’s in its picking range than the prototype, then ONLY FIFTY robots will be needed to replace ONE existing cotton picking combine ... got it ... YEA TECHNOLOGY! ...

[noiseman]

About 200 years too late to have prevented our violent crime problem.

[EnderWiggin1970]

What would the Chinese do with all the Uighur slave laborers they have picking cotton?

[DesertRhino]

But can it sing spirituals and work songs?

[DesertRhino]

Can it sing “The Camptown Ladies”?

[SaveFerris]

Heh, pretty much!

Yikes

[SaveFerris]

I hired these people to get a little railroad track laid down!

Not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City Fa........

So tell me,
why should it be true?
That I, get a belt,
out of you!

[Az Joe]

For God’s sake paint the robots White!

[Magnum44]

I hired these people to get a little railroad track laid down!