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.
You have to remember wages in this discussion.
"American's won't do that job" is what is said. They leave off "for the wage we are willing to pay".
So they import undocumented workers who will accept lower wages because we've created a massive system to find and deport them after incarcerating them for one or more years. And the alternative in their home country is so shitty that they'll do it.
It costs us billions per year to make it so those farmers can pay foreigners shitty wages. ICE isn't cheap. And the cheapest way to enforce immigration laws (imprison the farmers paying the undocumented workers) just doesn't happen for some reason. Backing the recent coup in Honduras isn't as expensive as ICE, but it's still money.
We could require farmers to actually respond to market demand and pay higher wages.....but the invisible hand is not allowed to hurt capital.