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Agricultural robotics research fellow Dr Christopher Lehnert spoke at CQUniversity yesterday about robots being developed to pick fruit and detect weeds.
One problem they could solve was harvesting labour shortages.
"It's a causal workforce problem. (For farmers) their really high risk is getting a workforce to pick the fruit," Mr Lehnert said.
"There's not a worry about job losses. We're just shifting the paradigm. Instead of being in the field, they will control robots."
He hoped to be well on the way towards a commercial fruit-picking design by the end of next year.
Another part of his research was designing robots for broadacre weed management.
"We are looking at taking the human out of the tractor and getting an autonomous platform," he said.
"The large machines they use on farms do a lot of damage to the soil. They compact the soils and destroy them.
"But robots would be smaller, they wouldn't cause this issue."
Hmm, this kind of thing didn't end well for the Quarians...
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 12 2015, @10:59AM
Only a few years ago (well into this century) I read a story in which telepresence robots were used to pick fruit in Califonia. The people controlling the robots were in third-world low-wage countries, obviating immigration problems.
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AndyTheAbsurd on Sunday July 12 2015, @12:44PM
I remember that story! And IIRC, the farm that was doing it wasn't publicizing it, and the main character stumbled on the situation. It was in either Asimov's or Analog. I don't remember either the title or the author, though - if you've got one of those, I'll take a peek at my back issues and see if I can come up with the other part.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.