Slashdot Mirror
Robots Are Trying To Pick Strawberries. So Far, They're Not Very Good At It (npr.org)
Robots have taken over many of America's factories. They can explore the depths of the ocean, and other planets. They can play ping-pong. But can they pick a strawberry? From a report: "You kind of learn, when you get into this -- it's really hard to match what humans can do," says Bob Pitzer, an expert on robots and co-founder of a company called Harvest CROO Robotics. (CROO is an acronym. It stands for Computerized Robotic Optimized Obtainer.) Any 4-year old can pick a strawberry, but machines, for all their artificial intelligence, can't seem to figure it out. Pitzer says the hardest thing for them is just finding the fruit. The berries hide behind leaves in unpredictable places. "You know, I used to work in the semiconductor industry. I was a development engineer for Intel, and it was a lot easier to make semiconductor chips," he says with a laugh.
I hate strawberries..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Go half-way down the article, and you'll find this nugget:
Also, he admits, the machine is slower than human hands. On the other hand, it has some advantages. It can work right through the night, when berries are cooler and less fragile.
Another two years, he says, and this machine will be in the fields working for real. "There's quirks to work out, but it's getting there. We're close," he says.
While the headline makes it seem like the robot picker is far from reality, the people working on it don't think so. And it's not just a minor project:
Strawberry companies representing two-thirds of the industry are putting millions of dollars into this project.
The robots are indeed coming for our jobs. Because if they can pick strawberries, what can't they pick?*
*Their nose.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
>and it was a lot easier to make semiconductor chips
If you have 6 biliion dollars to spend on equipment
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
They should create more A.I. jobs for improving the Artificial Intelligence and consequently better robots.
I'm pretty sure Donald Trump couldn't.
well, not these robots (these ones are coming for Migrant farm workers jobs). There's been a huge push in the US to kick the migrant farm workers out, mostly it's racially motivated. Nobody in America really wants to pick strawberries for a living. Aside from it being awful work with low pay it's seasonal, meaning you can't have a stable family even if the pay was OK.
To be fair there's a lot of blue collar jobs (drywall, home repair, construction) that are also being done by illegal immigrants. As a tech worker who's seen his job prospects cut down by the H1-B program it's hard not to sympathize with a plumber seeing less work because anything bigger than a drain pipe is being done by contract firms that employee illegal labor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Any 4-year old can pick a strawberry, but machines, for all their artificial intelligence, can't seem to figure it out. Pitzer says the hardest thing for them is just finding the fruit. The berries hide behind leaves in unpredictable places.
Can't the robot's patented BerryFind(TM, patent pending) technology collect video, then stream it to the desktop, where people can click on leaves to move or berries they see? That way they could assist the robot in berry hunting-seeking in an entirely non-ominous way.
That's just a given, rumors of the robot apocalypse are very likely overblown. Doesn't bode well for autonomous solutions. That's where hype and ignorance will get you, though.
Just like anything robots do. They may not be great at it the first time but they'll get better.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I ask Jose Santos, the crew leader, whether he thinks robots will do this work someday. He smiles. "Hey, it could happen! Put a man on the moon, didn't we?"
Put people on the moon. Believe that story do ya?
Yes this was a joke, no I don't think we didn't land on the moon. But dinosaurs..... now THAT's all hollywood fakery!
Another joke BTW
Or at least not this Human.
Many years ago during the summer between University semesters I was unable to find a conventional job. My parents wanted me to to try anything, so after much cajoling I tried becoming a professional strawberry picker... It didn't turn out so well. Those that do it for real work, are really good at it, and probably a bit crazy as well. At the time in the mid-late nineties minimum wage where I was located was 5.85$ I think. Strawberry picking you were paid by volume. After working for a couple weeks, I figured out one day that I was probably pulling in less than 2$ an hour because I was so slow at it. Not willing to face my parents without seeming to give it at least the old college try, I dutifully drove to the farm each morning, parked my car by the side of the road, and read a book all day, returning at the end of the day. I did this for a couple more weeks, until I could finally go and say I tried but it really wasn't working out. It is really hard, dirty, hot work...
Best left to the Robots, or at least once they figure it out...
When it comes down to it, machines are very specialized. If we are going to build something, it usually is worth it to min-max it all the way to do one thing as well as possible.
Worse, computers are really only good at one particular type of thinking, which I like to call 'math pushed to the limit'. We keep figuring out new ways to push math to do more, but when it comes down to it, computer programming lacks the massive non-math based methods that humans use. Compared to computers, humans can do math, but only basic stuff. But compared to humans, computers can't do ANYTHING that they can't first turn into math.
So far we haven't figured out a way to convert the task of picking strawberries into math, and we have not yet figured out all the many minimum sensation feedback we use to properly pick strawberries (sight and touch) .
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
UBER strawberry picker!
There's been a huge push in the US to kick the migrant farm workers out, mostly it's racially motivated.
Wrong, as even you admit at the end of your post.
But even for labor that supposedly "no American will do" (which I find questionable since no-one has asked the huge homeless population of California if they'd be willing to try)... Even there, the issue is that if we did want to use really cheap labor from abroad - why can that labor not come in legally?
Lots of people do not like illegal immigrants not because of race, but because of them being here ILLEGALLY. They have jumped the line as it were over many, many people of the SAME RACE that are trying to get here legally. That's what many people dislike, they are fine with immigrants - but there is a process to go through to become one. Go through that and (almost) everyone will welcome you with open arms.
In fact many legal immigrants who came from Mexico have the same issue with illegal immigrants, they went to the trouble of coming in properly and see it as unfair someone else just gets to walk in.
Canada sure doesn't let just anyone in through the U.S.. Why should the U.S. not have as rigorous control over immigration as pretty much any country on Earth?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All they have is algorithms, data, and a glorified table lookup.
There is no fucking intelligence in these machines.
If they _actually_ had intelligence they could figure out the process _themselves._
i.e.
How Smart Are Crows? | ScienceTake | The New York Times
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
...only time.
Not too terribly long ago we were told these were jobs that Americans wouldn't do. Now apparently we're to believe they're jobs nobody will do:
Strawberry companies representing two-thirds of the industry are putting millions of dollars into this project. Gary Wishnatzki, the owner of Wish Farms, got the whole thing started. The reason, he says, is that it's getting more and more difficult to find enough people to pick his berries.
"The fact of the matter is, if we don't solve the problem of this labor shortage with automation, the industry's up for a big challenge ahead. The price of fruit's going to be much higher," he says.
better as in no American will do it for $3.12/HR
When the robot revolution starts, just dress as a strawberry.
Have gnu, will travel.
When the minimum wage is well above that, why should anyone do it for that little?
The berries hide behind leaves in unpredictable places.
I used to pick strawberries when I was a kid. Those sneaky bastards would hide everywhere. The craftiest ones would sneak over and hide in the raspberry bushes because raspberries weren't being picked yet. Dumb ones would find a pea vine to attach to. It's pretty obvious when a red thing is hanging where a pea pod usually is. I'm pretty sure that strawberries are red-green color blind based on that.
better as in no American could do it for $30/hr cause they are too fat and/or haven't got the stamina or drive.
Only I can judge you.
So get over it
to build a robot to pick strawberries. The people trying aren't having much success.
How did I know this was a msmash article before looking?
Start paying $30/hr and lets find out if that is true.
Look,
We just need to feed the robot's image sensors through a decent image recognition algorithm, and machine learning will find the freaking strawberries... If we can build an image processor that can identify pictures of cats better than humans, it's just a matter of having enough processing power to pick out the strawberries from the robot sensors... We can also program some Bezo's pitbulls to milk those mother freaking cows too.. so soon (5-50 years), labor can be knocked out of the cost of strawberries and cream... or replaced with robot maintenance costs... And we'll start to ignore strawberries, they'll be food for the poor... I guess...
I thought such robots had been in use for years.
Like the one that went on sale in Japan in 2013 , possibly descended from the one in the labs in 2010
Or the Agrobot Strawberry Harvester in 2012. Their current Series E is advertised as doing all the stuff TFA says is hard and just being developed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Agriculture is usually paid piece work in the US so the real pay is often less than $3/hr.
And if you buy an expensive machine and it breaks, you need expensive mechanics to fix it. But you can always just hire another Mexican.
The big issue is that the machines are becoming cheaper. At $100K Mexicans are cheaper. But at $10K the economics change.
Also, we will see the machines in civilized countries with proper minimum wages first before they become popular in the USA.
Yes, jobs matter, but that's not what's getting folks to the polls. Not just that. Racism is definitely a factor. You're being childishly naive if you think otherwise. Google the Southern Strategy and read up on it. Racism, along with Guns and Abortion, form the Holy Trinity of wedge issues used to divide the working class.
Thing is, this is complicated shit. Guys like Trump don't win just because of racists, but they don't win without racists. It's one of many factors. There's no black and white here (pun not intended). We need to address white working class men's lack of jobs and futures and solve their problems, but we also need to address the widespread racism among them and get them to understand that it's not helping them.
And no, nobody really gives a rat's behind about fairness here. We're adults. Fairness is something of a childish emotion in this context. People want jobs. And They want to get rid of the others that are not like them. But nobody really gives a rat's ass about it being fair. If that's all that was at stake we'd just open our borders and everybody would compete in the free market in complete fairness.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they got paid $30 / HR than nobody could afford the strawberries. So everyone would want to make more. Now $30 isn't worth very much. Right back to where you started, except you have to print more money and pennies are unsustainable to keep around.
JM
the point is they're coming here competing for scarce jobs in a country where your entire quality of life depends on your job. That said, racism is also a factor. But it's foolish to ignore the impact on jobs & wages they have. The flood of cheap blue collar workers is no different than the flood of cheap H1-Bs. Heck, it's worse. We not only have the H2-B visa but a ton of illegals taking jobs. Yes, it's good for the economy for them to be here, but that hardly matters if you're stuck working at Walmart for $7.50/hr and 30 hours a week.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
cause they are too fat and/or haven't got the stamina or drive.
*suddenly wakes up* Wait, were we talking about picking strawberries?
Shari's Berries sells chocolate covered strawberries for more than $3.00 each. Somebody's buying them, so your claim is false.
Labor for picking is not the only cost in strawberries, so retail price is not just a multiple of the labor rate. Also, the market trend is for larger strawberry varieties, which lowers the labor portion of the market price.
Just picking what seems like reasonable numbers out of the air, a worker ought to be able to pick more than a pound of large strawberries each minute (these things weigh one or two ounces each.) At the absurd rate of $30/hr for unskilled labor, that still only adds less than 50 cents per pound to the producer's cost (not price).
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Thanks for the links. The Japanese machine is very slow. The Agrobot is faster, but both machines are designed for greenhouse situations where the strawberries hang out into the aisles where the machine works. Picking strawberries in a field where the plants are in rows of soil raised perhaps 4 inches above the aisles is a more difficult problem, requiring a more clever movement of the berries once picked and the ability to move aside leaves to get the berries, etc..
This shouldn't be a technically difficult problem, but there is a lot of tedious engineering to be done.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate