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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 penguinoid on Sunday July 12 2015, @09:26PM
This sort of robot could be the solution to the illegal immigration "problem". I say "problem" because any politician that solves this "problem" by having Americans do those jobs is going to get kicked out of office in a hurry when prices double. So the politicians who pander to anti-immigration folks occasionally round up and deport a few immigrants just to show they're "serious" (but will never do anything that might threaten to actually *work*, like real punishments for hiring illegals and sting operations to make sure said employers are found out).
So then the question becomes, will the robot be more cost-effective than what people are paying now (including things like medical care and education and extra policing)? And if so, what's the political worth of having a feared "them" coming and stealing our jobs (and that's definitely why you're unemployed and we need more draconian laws)? On the other hand, there would be a new business lobby that will be advocating an end to illegal immigration due to its competition with their robots.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.