Posted on 04/24/2015 7:28:14 AM PDT by reaganaut1
OXNARD, Calif.A 14-arm, automated harvester recently wheeled through rows of strawberry plants here, illustrating an emerging solution to one of the produce industrys most pressing problems: a shortfall of farmhands.
Harnessing high-powered computing, color sensors and small metal baskets attached to the robotic arms, the machine gently plucked ripe strawberries from below deep-green leaves, while mostly ignoring unripe fruit nearby.
Such tasks have long required the trained discernment and backbreaking effort of tens of thousands of relatively low-paid workers. But technological advances are making it possible for robots to handle the job, just as a shrinking supply of available fruit pickers has made the technology more financially attractive.
...
Farmers of corn and other commodity crops decades ago replaced most of their workers with giant combines and other machines that can quickly cut and gather grain used for animal feed, food ingredients and ethanol. But growers of produce and plants have largely stuck with human pickerspartly to avoid maladroit machines marring the blemish-free appearance of items that consumers see on store shelves.
An abundant supply of workers, particularly from Mexico, willing to plant, pull weeds and harvest ripe crops for relatively low pay also had suppressed the need for mechanization. But the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. workforce has been declining since its peak in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center, in part because of increased job opportunities in Mexico, as well as tighter U.S. border patrols.
With workers in short supply, the only way to get more out of the sunshine we have is to elevate the technology, said Soren Bjorn, Americas unit head for Driscoll Strawberry Associates Inc., the countrys largest berry brand. Driscolls largest berry grower, Reiter Affiliated Companies LLC, is partly financing the development of Mr. Bravos Agrobot.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Dirt cheap, near slave labor, is the only reason that food production hasn’t been more automated.
The same was true of true slave labor in the old south, it stunted technological developments.
Because of its hardness/density difference to the rest of the plant and uniform ripening, grain harvesting was mechanically achieved long ago. But soft fruit and vegetables that ripen at varying speeds pose a much more difficult problem (and rock hard green tomatoes are not the answer).
A swarm of droids that tend the crops is probably not too far in the future. I doubt that they will be humanoid in design though, just doesn’t make sense.
Pendulums still swing, and we will still get consequences from “over trusting” robots.
Still, it is quite in line with the good Lord’s imperative to “subdue the earth.” It is wild. It must be tamed to be of good. In the process of taming it, we must tame our own selves from sin too.
Soylent Green production will be entirely automated.
Sounds like you're on the right track there. The "jobs Americans won't do" are now 'jobs Illegals won't do either'. Obviously we need to find a new source of illegal labor willing to work cheaper than a robot!
hang drywall, repair cars... well they are at least half red neck. if that could be completed...
I dissent. Engineering is an honorable pursuit. No matter how well done, there is always room to do it better.
Do it too well and you will lose your soylent customers.
Pendulums still swing, and we will still get consequences from over trusting robots.
I’ve heard people say that self driving cars will never happen because we can’t fully trust them to never fail. Yeah, and PEOPLE never fail. HAHAHAHAHA!
I pass roughly 20 crosses on the highway every day on my way to work. It wasn’t a robot that led to those crosses being erected.
On a side note, I’d like to see those crosses removed. Can you imagine what our hospitals would look like if someone stuck up a cross everywhere where someone died.
Maybe we could stand to have a cross every place someone accidentally died in a hospital. They’d serve as warnings.
The hypothetical self driving car will need to keep up with everything a competent human driver can, as long as the rules of the road are kept commensurate (open to people). Not just regular traffic, but all manner of exceptions, and the robot needs to have a good physical intuition. For example — this morning an out-of-control car went skidding and spinning down the lane next to me. Everybody managed to dodge it and it stopped without harm. Mr. Robot has got to have a good idea about what that means.
It is the testing that will be gnarly.
Idle hands are the Devil's Playground.
Sometimes people remain idle because of too-rigid preconceptions of what things people can gainfully be pursuing. They idolize a job or an industry. In particular, a faith in God can help one think outside the box.
Later
When self driving cars start becoming main stream, there will be LOTS of roads (eventually most roads) where only self driving cars are allowed. They will have no traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Cars will zip around each other through intersections, missing by inches in a way that most humans could not possibly drive without killing someone.
There is a scene in “I Robot” where the lead character want’s to take manual control of the car and the car warns him that it is not safe at their current speed. That really is where we are headed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol3g7i64RAI
We on the right had better figure out how to manage the transition to a society in which there are very few jobs and great abundance, because the left already has an idea, and it looks an awful lot like the worst aspects of Brave New World, 1984, and The Hunger Games all rolled into one.
Paging Mr. Whitney, Mr. Eli Whitney, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Think a generation beyond this current-crop of Ag-Bots. Imagine a HOME Garden-bot, that will till and fertilize YOUR soil, grow the veggies YOU choose, and harvest them.
Too much produce? That sounds like a job for Canning-bot. . .
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