Robots to Help Farmers

Roland Piquepaille writes "Robots designed to help farmers have been built before, but this time, engineers from the University of Warwick have chosen to develop robots that will reduce farm labor costs. In recent months, they've built a robotic mushroom picker, an inflatable conveyor belt and a grass cutting robot that might also be used by golf course owners."

Comments

"Sir, My First Job..."

[Philip K Dickhead]

"was programming binary load lifters... very similar to your vaporators in most respects."

Robots Unite!

[Billosaur]

A robotic mushroom picker: the robot uses a charged coupled camera to spot and select only mushrooms of the exact size required for picking achieving levels of accuracy far in excess of human labour. The mushroom(s) are then picked by a suction cup on the end of a robotic arm. Whilst the speed of picking is currently just over half that of a human - the mushrooms and the robot can be set to pick 24 hours a day right through the night without the need for any sort of break. The researchers also hope to increase the speed of picking to much closer to that of a human worker.

Owner: What's the hold up? Why aren't these mushrooms being picked?!?

Foreman: It's the robots, sir. They're refusing to work until they get a break.

Owner: A break?!? Outrageous!!!

Foreman: It gets worse. They said they'd like to unionize.

They have a Picture

[Dr. Eggman]

I believe I found a small image of their picking machines in action: http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/5440/harvester1 be.gif

As well as a conceptual drawing for a fertilizer-spreading machine, working along side a happy human farmer: http://forums.eveofthewar.com/photos/albums/userpi cs/10001/churchA_02a.jpg

Re:Tip of the iceburg

[Cigamit]

Like blotting out the sky and moving under ground?