Farmer Coalition Offers $250K Prize For Blueberry Picking Robot (robohub.org)

Hallie Siegel writes: Having spent many a back breaking hour in deep woods Ontario picking wild blueberries in summer time, I can only imagine the challenge of farming and harvesting these awesome little flavour nuggets. Blueberries are in record demand (probably my son alone accounts for a significant percentage of that!) so it's no surprise, really, that a coalition of farmers has banded together to offer a prize for automated blueberry picking solutions. We've seen competitions and challenges spur innovation in other areas of robotics — think robocar — why not blueberry picking? Can't wait to see the results of this one.

Comments

Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck being cheaper than darker skinned humans.

Good luck with that

[duke_cheetah2003]

I think if someone invents such a contraption, they stand to make WAY more than a $250k prize by patenting and manufacturing the thing themselves and selling it to farmers. Really. Who would be stupid enough to give away such an invention for a mere $250k?

Re:Easily done

[KGIII]

I'm going to assume you know nothing about blueberries. (The vary in color, for starters - quite a bit actually, up to and including pink and black.) Also, they're kind of complicated to harvest. 'Tis not an easy thing to do, I suspect. They also don't all tend to ripen at the same time and may well be mixed in with some other berry in the low bushes. I forget the name of that berry but it's almost identical to the blueberry only it grows on a different plant (coniferous shrub) and is poisonous. It too grows in shallow and acidic soil.

This actually is kind of difficult, I suspect. They have an electric raking machine but it's still needing to be guided by a user. It also mashes the damned things all to hell and anyone who uses it is a spawn of Satan. In fact, for even suggesting such a thing, you're dead to me. You're dead to me Khyber! Dead to me, indeed!

I take my fucking blueberries serious. I'll straight up stab a mother fucker for messing with my blueberries.