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Japanese Robot Picks Only the Ripest Strawberries
kkleiner writes "The Institute of Agricultural Machinery at Japan's National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, along with SI Seiko, has developed a robot that can select and harvest strawberries based on their color. Ripened berries are detected using the robot's stereoscopic cameras, and analyzed to measure how red they appear. When the fruit is ready to come off the vine, the robot quickly locates it in 3D space and cuts it free. From observation to collection, the harvesting process takes about 9 seconds per berry. Creators estimate that it will be able to cut down harvesting time by 40%."
One step away from harvesting humans!
These robots are the real zombies, they need brains to power their neural net.
Because if they can, then we'd want the robots to pick them before they're ripe, so that they'll be ripe just as they show up on the display case in the store.
The video seems to show this moving on smooth straight metal tracks. I wonder how adapting it to travel on uneven dirt paths will affect it's ability to cut the intended strawberry? Either that or they run track up each row in their one square kilometer field.
used panties
Goodbye Mexicans!
In under 3% of cases the robot shoots the strawberry with a rocket launcher.
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
In the USA, we call them cherries.
Have gnu, will travel.
Get the price of such robots down enough and there'll be little incentive to pay sub-par wages to migrant field workers. (Regardless of immigration status, but illegals are more exploitable.)
Conversely it could be because we've long had a source of cheap field labor that the US agricultural machinery business hasn't made such advances in robotics. Pity, really -- many of the issues a robotic strawberry picker has to deal with are common to the activity of a whole range of other robots. Build a general purpose agricultural field worker robot and have alternate software loads (and perhaps interchangeable picker mechanisms) for blueberries, tomatoes, whatever.
(Such picker robots, with appropriate sensors, could also be adapted to tasks like minefield clearing. Although that might lead to a scenario like that in the TV adaptation of Heinlein's "Jerry Was a Man".)
-- Alastair
Farmers everywhere will be screaming "The Cylons took our jobs"
Quote on page bottom as I read the comments:
"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
Truly amazing technology! But... The idea that this sort of thing will free people to lead more leisure lives is nonsense. What technology like this does is eliminate jobs for humans, who will than have to find other jobs, and eventually, in the end, result in huge unemployment, and a more defined caste system of super rich and dirt poor.
Seriously.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
and whats the fail out when very few have health care? after all the jobs are gone?
Jam packed jails and lockup with people who just go in to get some health care?
lots of sick people who make the rich who can pay for it get sick off the people who can pay for it?
That's exactly the problem here - capitalism won't work when we automatize most of the jobs. We are seeing the transition into that right here, right now. The only question remaining is if the current system can fail and transform gracefully, or if it will end up in violence. I am not optimistic.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
You have to bury too much of the population in holes before they accept your wonderful plans for them.
In the video attached to the story, look at the user interface on the robot - It has a big red button marked "First Blood". Why??
Probably true, alas.
-kgj
They said the same thing when the first steam engine powered the first factory. Human greed will never go away, and that is the engine of capitalism, not money, not labor. We will find other unmet wants to work on.
SSC
But of course, raspberries grow on bushes, not vines.
From observation to collection, the harvesting process takes about 9 seconds per berry. That's too slow.
This isn't the first strawberry-picking robot. Here's one from five years ago. But compare this with a commercial strawberry harvester that's just digging up the beds. (Note, incidentally, that the tractor is driverless. That's standard precision farming technology today; several GPS manufacturers make the gear for that.)
Automated fruit sorting using computer vision is a routine process, and it's really fast. Small-fruit sorting machines are strange to watch. Cameras watch the fruit go by, and air jets push it around. This is all happening in bulk, much faster than humans can even watch, as big conveyors pump a stream of mixed product through the machine and streams of sorted product come out.
Robotic tomato pickers have been built by several groups, but so far the machines are too slow and the cost is too high.
In practice, the way agricultural sorting works is that the good stuff is sold is fresh fruit, the not-so-good stuff goes off to make jellies, tomato paste, and such, and the rejected stuff becomes animal feed or fertilizer.
In this case, I don't think that we can blame capitalism. 80 years ago it was assumed that by the turn of the next century that we'd be down to only working an average of 4 hours a day and getting to goof off the rest of the time. Which at the time seemed reasonable given that the work day had been shrinking.
But obviously that hasn't happened, the only people working short hours like that are doing it because they can't get more hours or don't have to support themselves.
Basically a few things happened. One was that people started to expect to own a lot of crap that they probably don't want and definitely don't need. Rather than being happy owning one car, people started buying two or more cars and rather than a rather basic model going for deluxe features.
That was bad, but then you had a lot of pseudo-intellectuals suggesting that we could all have more pie if we handed it to the richest to manage. Turns out that it doesn't work that way. The wealth comes from the production of things, not so much from the redistribution of things and the wealthy don't consider themselves to be responsible for the well being of the poor. There are exceptions, just not enough to make it work.
Well, if you automatize every menial job away, there won't me much to do for a lot of the population than sucking the owning classes' dicks and licking their boots. You want to go there?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Aren't you blaming capitalism in your last paragraph? That's exactly the consequences of accumulation of capital. Pretty much orthodox Marxism, not that I disagree with that.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Institute of Agricultural Machinery
But are they in charge of Gundam?
capitalism won't work when we automatize most of the jobs
It will work if you own capital.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Great, so now we're going to suffer with shitty berries too?
> capitalism won't work when we automatize most of the jobs.
Sure it will. It just means that you have to be smarter than a machine, and have a skill that cannot be trivially done by an industrial robot. Fortunately, this is not difficult; humans have evolved complex brains which excel at tasks that cannot be automated.
Paying people to do what machines can trivially do is a form of the Broken Window Fallacy.
I'm confident that there will always be a demand for good dick-suckers, and the guys who train them.
But really, moving a lot of people over to non-menial jobs doesn't have to be a bad thing.
As plan B, they can always die for their country. Robots will never be able to replace us as meaningless human sacrifices.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
I made that to address the issues you raise...
Which are also addressed in the knol, too.
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
See also my comments here in response to Martin Ford's blog post: ..."
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
"In brief, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks are decreasing the value of most paid human labor (by the law of supply and demand). At the same time, demand for stuff and services is limited for a variety of reasons -- some classical, like a cyclical credit crunch or a concentration of wealth (aided by automation and intellectual monopolies) and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff as they move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or a growing environmental consciousness. In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux or blogging), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation), and stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). There are some bad "make work" alternatives too that are best avoided, like endless war, endless schooling, endless bureaucracy, endless sickness, and endless prisons. Simple attempts to prop things up, like requiring higher wages in the face of declining demand for human labor and more competition for jobs, will only accelerate the replacement process for jobs as higher wage requirements would just be more incentive to automate, redesign, and push more work to volunteer social networks. We are seeing the death spiral of current mainstream economics based primarily on a link between the right to consume and the need to have a job (even as there may remain some link for higher-than-typical consumption rates in some situations, even with a basic income, a gift economy, etc).
In another comment I there I summarize these four progressive approaches in a bit more detail.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"We will find other unmet wants to work on."
As I explain at the knol and elsewhere, that assumes a few things:
* People in general will not continue a move towards environemntal consciousness, voluntary simplicity, spiritual gorwth, and moving up malsow's heierarchy of needs to more social interaction and self actualization which generally is fairly cheap to do.
* Virtualization using computers won't meet these needs (so, owning a big mansion, but in Second Life where it is cheap to have one);
* Productivity will not continue to rise faster than any ncrease in demand;
* Most human labor will remain valuable because robotics and other automation, better design, and/or voluntary social networks will never be able to do most jobs (or avoid the need to do them) better than most paid labor can do the work; and
* There will not be increasing concentration of wealth through low barganining power for labor as ever more peoeple are put out of work, where at best workers need to take on debt leading to bubbles to continue to consume.
If any one of those assumptions prove false, an income-through-jobs link can't work, as productivity will outpace demand. It seems like all of them are becoming false in our current economic system.
At some point, excessive greed and financial obesity may be seen as a sign of mental illness, not a sign someone should be a leader...
See also:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
See James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear for a story about a better future...
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
More by me on ways forward:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://books.google.com/books?id=hM_JDjq6V-kC
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
See also my comment here on how it's all about our social paradigm:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1883960&cid=34448172
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You're missing the point -- we automated most of the menial jobs hundreds of years ago. It turned out all right. Why does it make sense to worry about the automation of a few more of them?
Yes, being able to produce energy at home with reneables like solar panel,s and being able toprint your own stuff in a 3D printer (and even recycle stuff back into raw materials) is a form of capitalims that connects with the locaism solution I mention (among others of a gift economy a basic income, and democratic resource-base plannin).
See writings by Kevin Carson for more ideas on how we might all become capitalists in that sense, even as we move beyond other aspects of capitalism.
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Albus#Peoples.27_Capitalism
A basic income could also be seen as a claim on our global capital as a right of citizenship:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
But it is a different paradigm for the mythology of wealth:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Capitalism doesn't work when we live off credit. When we mainly extend credit to those speculating on the prices of existing assets.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Obamacare has already passed, get over it. Not enough jobs will mean far bigger social problems than a lack of "free" health care. Historically it has brought on revolutions and genocides.
Here in Southwest Oregon, grape harvesting machines are standard. Raven64, are you in South France? Don't growers in your area have such machines yet?
Related to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_hypothesis
People went from 90% agriculture workers to about 2% agriculutre workers over the past two hundred years in the USA. Of the current agriculutral production, 75% of the effort goes to meat production which is not strictly needed and in general is harming people's health, and otherwise people eat too much of the wrong foods and are obese (see Dr. Fuhrman). Why is agriculture still not using 90% of the labor force? Automation and limited demand.
Compulsory schools were created to keep kids off the street and train them to be soldiers and factory workers. Working hours went down from 12 hours 6 days a week to 8 hours five days a week, and only for adults. Child labor was outlawed. So, much of the working force was freed.
In 1950, about 30% of the workforce was in manufacturing. Now it is more like aroung 12%, and the same amount of stuff is still produced (plus some is imported from China). Why? Increasing automation, better design, and limited demand. Many people are drowning in junk that clutters their homes and lives.
Granted, in the USA, women have gone into the work force and there are other confounding factors.
What happens when services go the same way through robotics and other automation, better design, voluntary social networks, and limited demand?
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/
Consider also that unlike food and some basic goods, most services are optional.
It turns out even most medical care is probably harmful and unneccesary, compared to just eating better and getting adequate vitamin D.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
The entire economy is poised to implode.
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"But obviously that hasn't happened, "
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/2009/11/17/why-the-triple-revolution-memorandum-was-ahead-of-its-time/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Well, if you automatize every menial job away, there won't me much to do for a lot of the population than sucking the owning classes' dicks and licking their boots. You want to go there?
Right, but on the other hand, the commodities necessary for basic survival (strawberries, etc) will be manufactured so efficiently that even the underemployed and unemployed will be able to afford them.
So there you have it: the future, where all the menial work is done by robots, and the majority of non-highly-specialized/educated humans live comfortably on the dole. Utopia or dystopia?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Manuel De Landa talks about how all real systems are meshworks and hierarchies. I suggest the future will be a mix of a gift economy, a basic income, stronger local economies with improved local subsistence, and democratic resource-based planning.
Markets can be good when eveyone has about equal purchasing power and when things cost their true costs, accounting for externalities like pollution or the cost of enforcement or systematic risk. But in order to do that often takes some demoncratic resource-based central planning using taxes, subsidies, income transfers, investments, and regulation.
All economies are socially constructed thing in practice.
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Consider how false most mainstream economic assumptions are about motivation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
We need as a society to move beyond simplistic and black/white conditioned-by-political-parties reflexive thinking on these themes.
The following is derived from what I say here:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
There are four interwoven good ways forward (basic income, gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, and local subsistence) and at least five bad ways to go backward (endless war, prisons, schooling, sickness, and bureaucracy). Here are some more details on these choices.
One way forward is a "basic income" where some percentage of the GDP (half?) is distributed equally to every citizen with no requirements related to age, disability, or willingness to work. That is not entirely about "need" (even as that is true for the reasons you mention that people need access to the fruits of industry -- see "The Triple Revolution Memorandum" from 1964). A basic income is IMHO mostly about the fact that every citizen has some moral claim on the industrial commons as a human right. This claim is for all sorts of reasons. Part of it is the same as people having some claim on breathing air by right of existence (and depriving people of air would be considered murder). And people have some claim in a democracy on the government to consider their interests through government programs, regulations, and taxation. And, there is the fact that any system of private property still has to begin with the arbitrariness of the original land distribution, which generally comes down to "finders keepers" or "might makes right" which are both problematical morally (like in the dispossession of any natives from the land, or in the slavery often used to work it -- whether chattel slavery or wage slavery). The USA already has aspects of a basic income with "Social Security" for the old or disabled (though it is age or needs based), and the USA has school taxes and college aid that pay a lot of money for young people (but not directly, only through a problematical public works jobs program called school).
A second positive solution is stronger local economies with local currencies and more local compassion and improved local subsistence (like using advanced robotics and advanced materials science to have cheap 3D printers that can print most of what people want, or cheap agricultural robots that allow people to easily produce food locally, or cheap solar panels printed in those 3D printers that make for cheap local power, or cheap recycling and resource extraction using nanotech). The town of Ithaca, with Ithaca HOURs and a town-wide focus on environmentalism has aspects of this.
Marshall Brain's Manna, at the end, had a solution that had aspects of both a basic income and stronger local economies (although the economy he had in Australia was still much larger than a local economy focused on a street or a village).
A third positive solut
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
...for the credit reason you said: http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
Basically, instead of giving money from increased productivity to workers as wages, as worker's collective bargaining power eroded for a variety of reasons (automation, women entering the work force, competition from China or other US states like the auto industry moving south, etc.), rich people kept all the money from productivity increases and *loaned* it to the workers instead. That eventually collapsed.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Agricultural mechanization is for Nazis.
Seastead this.
I think it will be good overall (barring things like irony killing us all)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
since it it a return to hunter/gatherer ideology with high techology, where hunter/gathers spent much of their time just rasining kids, socializing, and doing hobbies or contemplating nature and the infinite.
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
The robots are like the botanical plants that people used to pick the fruits from.
It is a form of natural capitalism in the sense that the planet and its infrastructure is essentially owned by all the people, who then get dividends as citizen capitalists. :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#A_history_lesson_pre-scarcity_times_Eden_then_scarcity_times_Dickens_then_post-scarcity_times_real_soon_now
You can have a basic income as suggested in Manna to schedule and distribute what the robots make through a sort of market demand force.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Or, if things get so abundant, like if 3D printing gets really good, you get perhaps Star Trek where people have moved beyond money, and you get mostly a gift economy and various sorts of ad-hoc planning and organizing like, say, Debian GNU/Linux.
"Study Reports On Debian Governance, Social Organization"
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/14/1349202
Typical hunter/gatherers had a gift economy and essentially collective land "ownership".
"Gift Economy: Refuting the Market Logic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4hFVcl6Vo
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Actually, the Nazis wanted to reduce non-Germanic races to slave labors. With endless supply of non-Germanic races, they have no need for agricultural mechanization.
I'm hoping for more of a gradual non-violent evolution into these changes over the next twenty to thirty years, myself:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
But, with all the ironies of people using these technologies of abundance to produce super fancy weapons like military robots to fight over percieved scaricty, it is worriesome. Rather than military robots to enforce a social order based on gettign peopel to worl like robots, why not just build robots to do any work people don't want to do voluntarily in the first place?
If it was a "revolution", think of it on the order of women getting the right to vote in the USA,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPF0SGh_PQ
or the UK outlawing slavery (with compensation to the owners and little violence, prompted by the Quakers, compared to the bloodbath in the USA over that),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism#Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
or the "computer revolution",
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521#
and so on.
I'm not disagreeing though with your point that the potential is there for great violence -- and not just in the streets, but also abortions, domestic violence, suicides, and so on. How can we prevent that?
I'm trying in my own nutty way to recruit the global intelligence community to help with a peaceful changeover. :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/76207-8319
But ultimately, some sort of change will happen regardless:
http://www.blessedunrest.com/
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Still, it might happen with less bloodshed if more people got involved sooner and understood the basic issues better.
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
The USA already spends about US$800 a citizen a year between schooling, social security, and welfare. Why not just scrap all those programs and give every citizen a check for US$800 a month as a basic income? A family of four could then just about scrape by somewhere rural, and given all their spare time, and they could homeschool or purchase tutoring or private school lessons. Public school buildings could be turned into library-like learing centers. Teachers could become private tutors or just live frugally off their basic income. People would have more free time to help their elderly neighbors, too, like bringing over stuff from their gardens, even if old people got less than their current amount. And so on. Probably this would fly best with seniors if just everyone got the current social security amounts though (no one wants to get less), which might mean more taxes.
And the USA already spends more for Medicare and Medicad per capita than other countries need to cover their entire population with better results, so health care could be extended to all with some better management and a focus on better diet, curing vitamin D deficiency, and building healthier "BlueZones" infrastructure, which would all save sick care costs, making single payer he
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
to be on the strawberry selecting and procuring robotic overlords welcoming committee?
*taps foot impatiently*
I guess they will have to revisit this
statement.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hope that a robot is invented to do rice farming soon so that farmers will be freed from the hard work farming rice. Not expensive but reasonable for poor farmers to buy in my country. Anyways, hope the price is the same rocky the robot Hahah
Machines have been determining the 'ripeness' of fruit for years. :)
I used to do IT Support for a fruit packing company with a 20 year old fruit sorter. The sensors used to determine how orange and orange was and dump it into its appropriate bin.
The good fruit would go to supermarkets and the green / rotten stuff would get sent off to make juice
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1891254&cid=34413838 TheEndOfDays likes stalking and trolling others online (as well as starting it up as shown right there)?
I like how he was put into his rightful place here in the end
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1891254&cid=34418274
That's where TheEndOfDays ran like the trolling little coward he really is, unable to back up his trolling and stalking crap, just as he did in the URL above I just posted here.
So what was TheEndOfDays reply when asked "why are you stalking others?"
See here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1892470&cid=34419130 or this direct quote below:
"Because I can" by The End Of Days (1243248)
on Thursday December 02, @12:07PM (#34419130)
Now everyone knows you're a scumbag troller and stalker because you admitted to stalking others here, because I can expose you admitting it with your own words scumbag.
That is exactly what Fernhout and many others wish to address.
It's a funny thing, we treat employment as if it's actually desirable. It is not. The income from employment is not only desirable, but necessary, but the employment itse;f is only an impediment to enjoying life. Consider, what would you think if you saw 200 people compete to see who gets the "privilege" of being kicked in the groin 5 days a week.
That's not to say we can all just quit tomorrow and live happily ever after, of course. There is work that must be done if we are to survive. I submit that the more of it we can get machines do for us, the better. The rest of the work should be distributed as evenly as possible to human beings until we can figure out how to get machines to do it.
Some work can actually be recreational provided it's done as a hobby and not as employment. That work will actually get done just fine if we simply give people enough free time to practice their hobbies. Examples include designing things, building prototypes, writing software, etc.
If our economic system is such that we're somehow better off being paid to BE the robots, then it is fundamentally broken. Automation replacing thousands of workers should be cause for celebration! The economy is OUR construct and it should serve us, not the other way around.
Consider, unemployment has hovered around 10% for some time now. If we all cut back to 36 hour weeks, that would just about cover it!
Hey, I live in the strawberry growing capital of the world.. The folks out in the fields are picking a LOT faster than 9 seconds/berry.. I'd guess in the 1 second/berry sort of rate. Granted, they can't keep that up for sustained hours, but still. If I can buy berries at the roadside stand for $10/flat, with hundreds of berries in the flat, I'd guess that the per berry picking cost has to be down in the 1cent/berry level.
They're paying the workers minimum wage of $8/hr (e.g. 0.2 cents/second)... if they were picking at 10 seconds/berry, those berries would cost a bunch more.
Yes, but since they are Japanese robots, they will still require an H1B visa to work in the fields of California.
Welcome our good tasted Robotic overlords
If you're Dutch (as I infer from your post) you can grow your own tomatoes easily. You do not need a greenhouse or even a large garden. They will grow outside in a large flowerpot, on a balcony if needed.
One caveat though: don't get your seeds from a garden center (Intratuin for example). Get an F1 hybrid species from a seed distributor. A packet costs about three euro's (contains more seeds than you can effectively plant).
Every seed will grow to a plant which will give fifty to a hundred excellent, flawless tomatoes. It can't go wrong, you don't have to know about gardening. One thing: water the plants a lot. That's it.
Japanese Robot
will pick only the ripest,
juicy strawberries.
#CD0000
The illegal Mexican immigrants are actually technically being "imported" by the Republicans, because conservative right-wing capitalist policies (less regulations and social services, less ability to practice grass-roots politics, less liberty in the face of market rule) make Mexico less of a free country for its people, so they come here where conditions are better. And yes it could mean loss of jobs if it's actually used by fruit growing companies, but this could just backfire on the Republicans like you because the people will be less happy and poorer in the end due to lower employment. Also if you get rid of the immigrant labor you'll have more people from your own country doing low wage jobs and more people likely to form unions who you can't throw out of the country if they go on strike. Nice try but your logic may be your undoing.
I find your invention of a strawberry-picking robot very fascinating. The technology for a robot to make decisions on the margin by choosing only the ripest strawberries is very impressive. Yet as users, such as “AllWorkAndNoPlay”, have already mentioned, would these robots cause an increase in unemployment? It is something to consider when looking at the economy as a whole. This new technology will increases the supply of strawberries. You should make note to not have too much of an increase of amount of strawberries. This is because with a surplus of strawberries available, the price of them may decrease. Finally, I would like to congratulate you for coming up with the interesting, unique idea of a strawberry-picking robot.