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Robots Picking Fruit and Driving Tractors

posted by n1 on Sunday July 12 2015, @09:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the i've-got-a-brand-new-combine-harvester dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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...

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:01PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:01PM (#208127) Journal

    Where is the risk ? It's a matter of cost !

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/23/us-usa-farmworkers-california-idUSKBN0P30EZ20150623 [reuters.com]

    Many have been stuck in Tijuana, across the Mexican border from San Diego, waiting for their visas to come through so they can proceed to jobs waiting for them in the cherry orchards, said Roxana Macias, program manager for the labor group.

    Time was running out for the cherry crop, she said.

    “Cherries are timely; if you don’t get them in the 10- to 14-day window when they’re ready to harvest, they become mush,” Macias said.

    ...

    “I don’t know if this damages the entire Washington sweet cherry crop,” Fazio said. “But I know that I have growers whose entire crop is wiped out.”

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