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

Or you know...

[GillBates0]

and a grass cutting robot that might also be used by golf course owners. Or you know, they could just get a bunch of cows to do the job instead. As an added benefit, this member of the bovine family is also capable of turning it into milk, which can yield tasty and nutritious dairy products for golf players

Let's see your fancy schmancy robots do that.

Re:Or you know...

[Dr. Eggman]

Well, we have machines that create soy milk from soy beans, with a little work I bet we could build a machine to create synthetic cow-like milk...

Plus, the machines will not leave little hills to hit your golf ball onto (you have to play it where it lands, thats the rule!) or stamp the ground flat with their massive weight. Of course, a golf course is massive, so your going to need a lot of cows to cut it down in a reasonable amount of time. Their not the fastest creatures either, so expect them to be out there practically all the time; Of course golf players will need to play through which will slow the cows down even more since PETA would never allow Cows to be hit by golf balls. Lastly, its unlikly you could teach a cow that certain areas must have different levels of grass.

"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.

Tip of the iceburg

[Locke2005]

I've always thought the perfect application for robots was in pest control. Let loose thosands of small robots into the fields programmed to search out and destroy mice, harmful insects, crows, etc., and you eliminate the need for insecticides. Sort of the high-tech way to do organic farming. You could also train them to spot plant diseases, and quarantine any plants that show symptoms before they spread to other plants. Yes, this requires several magnitudes of cost reduction before it becomes feasible, but it is going to happen eventually.

Re:Tip of the iceburg

[Cigamit]

Like blotting out the sky and moving under ground?

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:Will this be like Hybrid cars?

[dancpsu]

The cost of labor would be much higher without illegal immigrants from mexico taking the mushroom picking jobs that americans "just won't do". Instead of spurring innovation into more mechanized farming, we are spurring innovation into getting more cheap labor over the border. I would imagine that eventually robots will take over these jobs anyway and you will go to your automated grocery store in your self-driving car to purchase food grown on an automated farm.

There's not much left for the robots to do

[Phat_Tony]

In most modern American agribusiness, there's not much left for robots to do. Tilling, planting, harvesting, and all aspects of milling the final product are already mechanized. Even driving the tractor/combine is automated in many cases now- combines and such are often piloted by GPS.

It's true there are still labor-intensive things like fruit picking where advanced robots may one day replace illegal immigrants, but a lot of agriculture already takes place with a bare minimum of human involvement to farm hundreds of thousands of acres of prime crops like corn, wheat, and soybeans.

Re:Will this be like Hybrid cars?

[clockmaker]

Wrong. You should see the prices on tractors these days. Some of the larger ones are USD$250,000 or more. They come with options like LAAS GPS, radar, and laser-guided leveling to keep the rows straight and evenly spaced. The cabs are outfitted with laptops with wifi so the farmers can contact suppliers/buyers instantly as needed. There is big money in farm equipment, and the stereotype of the country bumpkin farmer is plain false. And don't forget, in the US, farming is moving to large "factory" corporate farms. Some of the equipment is already very close to "robotic."

No, but early threshing machines

[Flying pig]

Were hauled from side to side of fields by engines which could be moved slowly along the edges, so the field was threshed in a raster pattern. The prime movers, being cast and wrought iron steam engines, were to heavy to roll back and forwards across the fields.

Not strictly on topic perhaps, but goes to show that there is nothing much new under the sun.

Still, the whole thing reminds me of the Australian attempts to build robot sheep shearers, a brilliant idea if you don't mind cleaning the blood off the wall afterwards. With all the ineducable people in our society with nothing to do but take drugs and steal to pay for them (estimated 280 000 in the UK, how many in the US I dread to think), I would have thought (just as Huxley did in Brave New World) that the real answer is to pay adequately for farm laboring jobs so we have something for the less intelligent in society to do. What we paid for in food we would get back in reduced taxes and insurance premiums.

Re:No, but early threshing machines

[G-funk]

Here's a quick tip: western society is desperately short of tradesmen. It's a shitty job for 3 years, then you're earning fuckloads more than your mates who've been in university for the same time (unless they're lawyers / investment bankers). People who don't work but sit around on the dole and stealing / dealing for drug money do it coz they want to, or it's cool, or it's "the way it's always been round here in macquarie fields", not coz there's no choice. Of course they tell different when there's a camera around, but that don't make it so.

Re:Or you know... you could use cows/goats

[WillAffleckUW]

and a grass cutting robot that might also be used by golf course owners.
followed by
Or you know, they could just get a bunch of cows to do the job instead.

Hmm. We used to have a goat that "mowed" our two-acre lawn (on a 42 acre tree farm). I think it gave milk too.

And, it didn't rust.

In fact, it ate cans. So, if my goat met the farming robot, it would probably be thinking "Hmm. Lunch!"

Revenge tastes best when accompanied by chewing sounds.