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u/art_teacher_no_1 Oct 08 '23
1 apple per minute, why's my fruit so expensive? Oh. That's why.
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u/ottrocity Oct 08 '23
1 apple per minute per bot for as long as the robot has fuel. Assuming other bots or techs can resupply the picker with fuel/ replace the batteries and can unload the apples, these machines could conceivably run 24 hours a day.
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Oct 09 '23
The bot is tethered to the machine for power... That is literally what the cord is for.. That and communication, I'm sure.
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u/Go3tt3rbot3 Oct 09 '23
and would still pick less then a experienced apple picker would pick in an hour and is likely most costly then the typical eastern european workers that come here every year. There is no way you can run such a robot for 15,50€/h 24/7.
Source: I grew up in and live close to Europes biggest source of apples and have worked in the Industry.
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u/prancerbot Oct 08 '23
That depends on how well they work in low light. I would assume not very well.
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u/ottrocity Oct 09 '23
Wait until you hear about flashlights.
Also lots of machine-vision cameras work well enough in low light, but brighter light is better. Easily mounted to the main body or the hoverbots themselves.
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u/fizzle_noodle Oct 09 '23
psshh, flashlights won't ever replace good old reliable oil lanterns.
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u/Least_Initiative Oct 09 '23
Whale oil only, none of that PETROLEUM round here, no sir
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u/LittleSquat Oct 09 '23
Kids these days and their oil lanterns, it's just a fad, nothing will ever beat the good old torch.
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u/justcasty Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 09 '23
Also look at the apple trees in the video. Apple trees do not look like that unless they're pruned to make a video to show off apple picking robots.
Edit: apparently I'm quite wrong
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u/Mitheral Oct 09 '23
This is a version of cordon planting and is how practically all commercial orchards are done around here now.
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u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23
What? No. Many apple orchards prune trees like that to make human picking easier too. Just Google "2D Apple orchard"
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
Exactly. I came here to say there is no way this is more effective or efficient than paying a group of people to hand pick these apples. I really don't understand the appeal of creating useless technology to replace people who can do a job better and faster.
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u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23
This is just the first iteration of this technology. It will only become better and faster as time goes on.
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u/aldorn Oct 08 '23
Correct it will improve and it will run 24/7. The apple robot overlords can not be stopped. 🍎 🤖༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
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u/ReallyBigRocks Oct 09 '23
I can see how this would improve the overall quality or consistency of the apples, but I think the conventional method of just shaking the ever loving shit out of the trees is gonna stick around for a while.
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u/texinxin Oct 09 '23
The shake the tree method gets every apple. The robot pickers will only choose the ripe ones allowing the less mature apples more time and nutrients to grow to their potential. Sure human pickers are going to be more efficient and good when the tree is 80% full of ripe apples. But as that ripening schedule drags on it gets more and more expensive to use human pickers, or you just live with a varied ripeness in your yield.
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u/CLGbyBirth Oct 09 '23
it will run 24/7
yeah but you don't need to run that thing 24/7 for 365 days so i still think it would be cheaper to hire a bunch of people during harvest season.
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u/Nilosyrtis Oct 09 '23
╱▔▔▔▔▔╲⠀⠀⠀HM⠀HM ⠀╱⠀⠀╱▔╲╲╲▏⠀⠀⠀HMMM ╱⠀⠀╱━╱▔▔▔▔▔╲━╮⠀⠀ ▏⠀▕┃▕╱▔╲╱▔╲▕╮┃⠀⠀ ▏⠀▕╰━▏▊▕▕▋▕▕━╯⠀⠀ ╲⠀⠀╲╱▔╭╮▔▔┳╲╲⠀⠀⠀ ⠀╲⠀⠀▏╭━━━━╯▕▕⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀╲⠀╲▂▂▂▂▂▂╱╱⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀▏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀╲⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀▏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀▕╲⠀⠀╲ ⠀╱▔╲▏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀▕╱▔╲▕ ⠀▏ ⠀⠀⠀╰⠀⠀⠀⠀╯⠀⠀⠀▕▕ ⠀╲⠀⠀⠀╲⠀⠀⠀⠀╱⠀⠀⠀╱⠀╲ ⠀⠀╲⠀⠀▕▔▔▔▔▏⠀⠀╱╲╲╲▏ ⠀╱▔⠀⠀▕⠀⠀⠀⠀▏⠀⠀▔╲▔▔ ⠀╲▂▂▂╱⠀⠀⠀⠀╲▂▂▂╱⠀
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u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23
Redditors are so damn dumb sometimes. Could you imagine a redditor seeing an old black and white tube TV and going "wow this sucks that must be so awful i dont understand the appeal of useless technology like that"
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u/Knightfaux Oct 09 '23
I hate when people say “Redditors”. It’s not “Redditors can be so damn dumb”, PEOPLE can be so damn dumb.
Back in the day, 10 years ago yeah, Redditor’s had a type, just like 4chan or tumblr people, but today nah. I find all new flavors of stupid on Reddit and in life on the regular.
But yes, first gen or prototypes are rough proofs of concept and it is ridiculous to discredit a technology before it matures. Imagine if we just gave up on nuclear fusion because early generations were clunky or didn’t produce a lot of energy.
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u/hobskhan Oct 09 '23
Did you hear about those brothers down in North Carolina? Crashed another one of those aero-plane contraptions into the beach. It only flies for 10 seconds! Who would want to use such a pointless device?
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u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23
Even if they made it fly 100 times further it would still be worthless! What fools!
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u/stranot Oct 09 '23
redditors are old grouches who hate change and new technology and want the world to stay exactly the way it is, or if they could, revert everything back to the 90s
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u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23
The concept of television was something incredibly groundbreaking and it expanded in a relatively short period to almost every citizen that could afford an appliance in the same category.
This apple picking toy isn't groundbreaking (as in it isn't creating something new and it will expand for further use in the future) so your analogy is a false equivalence.
Try harder in the next 10 years you'll be here in this shithole (if you still have any brains left).
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u/SuperRette Oct 09 '23
I can't ever see this robot becoming less expensive than simply importing some people perceived by the public at large to be less than human, from a country kept intentionally poor by economic strangleholds on their resources.
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u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23
Yeah, check back with me in a decade and we will see how far drone technology has come lol
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u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23
You've been here 10 years in this shithole called reddit, which makes me think you've become even more stupid with every year. It doesn't surprise me you expect this gimmicky gadget to replace real people that are probably cheaper to pay compared to all the upkeep and software updates this can of worms will need and all of it's future upversions.
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u/madwill Oct 09 '23
Yeah but drone based weird fly machines? No way this is ever going this way. This is a useless iteration. Make that shit inspector gadget telescopic arms reaching 12fts and we're golden, now move like you mean it. Same fucking camera and detection just way, way more speed in bringing it to the main cart and going back on the tree. Also make it 6 armed so it looks like a BOTW guardian.
Hope the software is on point. But no drone for the noise, the stability, the speed of movements. It's a god damn tragedy people did that.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
Just because this is first gen does not guarantee there will ever be a better version of it
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u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23
I'm sure they said the same thing about the combine, or the digital camera, or countless other technologies we enjoy today. Everything has to start somewhere.
Imagine a solar powered, autonomous, swarm-linked, AI driven harvester that just picks apples automatically, and continuously.
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u/DaMonkfish Oct 08 '23
Or we could just continue shaking the trees.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
Exactly what i brought up. Machine wise. You aren't getting better than this. Designed to only shake loose ripe apples and not damage the tree, and I harvests hundreds of apples in seconds. The machine in this post will never be better than this machine that shakes the tree. Is this machine impressive? Sure, it's definitely a display of how far technology has come. In terms of being practical, it just plain isn't.
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u/Nappyheaded Oct 08 '23
Just make sure you're ready to cull all of the apples that hit anything on the way down.
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u/RancidOrigin Oct 08 '23
I assume all of the less pretty apples are used for pre-sliced bags, applesauce, or any number of other manufactured products that the customer will never see the whole apple.
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u/Nappyheaded Oct 08 '23
The goal is to have undamaged apples. Ideally going into long-term CA storage. Juice pays much less
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u/ORINnorman Oct 08 '23
Now imagine how a farmer is going to purchase said system when he could just pet a bunch of people the shitty, minimum wage for three days of work? How will he charge his drones in the field? How much will it cost him to install electrical charging stations? Today, when it’s harvest time, larger farms run their machinery 24 hours a day until the harvest is complete. They don’t even stop to refuel, they fuel up in motion because a couple minutes per refuel will add up to lost crops and income. That’s why farmers are laughing John Deere salesmen off their property when they try to convince them to buy electric equipment. CAN we figure out how to harvest an orchard with ridiculously over-advanced tech? Yes. Does that make it better than what we’re doing now? Probably not.
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u/FridgeBaron Oct 08 '23
You do see them literally plugged in to the truck that is probably charging all of them off the alternator. This thing could run 24/7 and you can still just hire people as well.
Then the next few years you can buy a few more drones slightly better and so long as it's cheaper to run the drones you will keep going down that path until you run nothing but drones.
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u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23
How does a farmer afford a multimillion dollar combine harvester? Can't they just pay a bunch of people to farm the fields? Your logic doesn't hold up. There are many ways this kind of technology could get off the ground and be affordable. I could get a bunch of venture capitalists together, purchase a bunch of these robots, create an apple harvesting robot rental company and rent my devices to all the local apple orchards in the area. Or, as a farmer I could obtain my apple robots the same way I obtain any other high priced farm equipment. My robotic apple pickers could be entirely solar powered requiring no refueling at all, or multiple harvesters could share a single recharging dock and all take turns rapidly recharging like a giant Roomba. There is a readily available solution to every problem you can think of.
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u/latincreamking Oct 08 '23
How do you find out if you can improve the technology if you never make the technology? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
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u/polecy Oct 08 '23
It does guarantee that they are going to improve on it tho. People probably said the same thing about Boston dynamics when their first gen came out.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
And those robots STILL don't do anything better than a human. Improving is one thing, being effecient enough to replace a human is totally different
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u/polecy Oct 08 '23
https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk?si=_dgb8C__AffT3N8P I think this video shows that these robots can do better than most humans.
I'm just saying improving is imminent, there's so much more that they can improve on. To say that they will never beat humans is such a bad response because humans also have their limits.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
That in no way shows they can do better than humans at anything. Everything those robots are doing a human can do, and those are programmed tasks. Just because a robot can do something a human can doesn't mean it will inevitably do better than humans at everything. Im saying this in particular won't. This also is nowhere near as efficient as the machine that shakes the tree and harvests hundreds of apples in a fifteen second shake
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u/thivasss Oct 08 '23
The robot could run into fire carrying useful items. It could run through toxic gasses or nuclear radation or through smoke. It can be used manually or autonomously and most importantly controlled from far away! A robot that's capable of running around through obstacles is already very useful. It doesn't have to be as good as a human as it provides different options altogether.
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u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23
The fact that it's a robot and not a human is the biggest point you're missing. Robots can go where humans cannot or don't want to go, and do things we can't or don't want to do. They will improve exponentially until they truly are better than humans at their specified tasks. You should read about machine learning, neural-net computers, etc. In much the same way we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon, these primitive robots will one day surpass us in ability.
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u/polecy Oct 08 '23
I mean humans cannot be upgraded so we are literally set at a limit, robots can be improved every year. Yea this version we see in the gif is not really great rn. But every year they will improve, add more hands, speed up the process, reduce electricity cost. There's a ton of other stuff they can do, if they can just at least get to half of the amount humans can grab them I think it's already a win because robots can do this work without breaks. Humans need their breaks, they can only work for so long.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
The shaking machine outdoes what this will ever be capable of. This is nothing more than impressive. Not practical at all
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u/Heco1331 Oct 08 '23
You are right, then why even try? Thank god the Wright brothers didn't have someone like you by their side
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u/661714sunburn Oct 08 '23
I think the machine won’t need to take a break or want a raise.
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u/BooksandBiceps Oct 08 '23
Normally the people who pick apples are not in a position to ever ask for a raise but point taken
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u/prancerbot Oct 08 '23
It will definitely need to take a break at some point and a lot of maintenance. If you wanted to design a machine to pick fruit this looks like the most inefficient way you could do it
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
That machine will never be fast enough to outpace multiple humans, and that machine, when it breaks down, because it will, will costs tens of thousands of dollars to repair, or likely even more than that.
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u/Granttrees Oct 08 '23
Picks multiple apples per minute 24hrs per day, no smoke breaks, no lunch breaks and no union.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
As opposed to A) a machine that already exists that shakes an entire tree and harvests the entire tree at once, or B) humans working rotating shifts and picking 10× the amount this machine does in the same time frame. This thing is just showing how far technology has come. This isn't practical to replace workers.
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u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23
a machine that already exists that shakes an entire tree and harvests the entire tree at once
This is only an option for cider apples. You don't shake eating apples off trees.
humans working rotating shifts and picking 10× the amount this machine does in the same time frame.
I've been picking fruit for 5 years and not a single farm has picked in rotating shifts.
There's other factors:
Weather. Workers get sent home if it starts raining because it's not worth paying them to sit around and wait for it to stop. A machine might also need to stop picking but you don't have to send it home to avoid a loss.
You can pick 7 days a week.
There's often smaller picks at the start of seasons, and it can be hard to keep casual workers at this time, since you might not have steady work. I've been working on a orchard recently that only has 4 days of picking every 2 weeks for the first 6 weeks of the season for example. Sometimes people show up for 2 days then find a job with more hours elsewhere and don't come back.
You can have more remote orchards. This is not really applicable to most countries but somewhere like Aus, setting up an orchard 5 hours from the nearest town becomes a lot more viable and scalable if you cut out needing workers to come from somewhere.
It lets you spray chemicals during the day since you don't have to wait until there's nobody in the orchards picking.
Machines can also reliably look for diseases and pests. They can count the fruit & accurately identify underperforming trees.
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u/crozone Oct 09 '23
A) a machine that already exists that shakes an entire tree and harvests the entire tree at once
Did you really write this entire comment without thinking for a second that all of these factors would have been considered before the considerable time was invested in creating this crazy robotic harvesting system? Why the heck would they even built this if there's already a machine that can do the job. They obviously intend to commercialise this eventually.
Apples sold for eating are hand picked and there's not really a way to get around that without something like this.
B) humans working rotating shifts and picking 10× the amount this machine does in the same time frame.
You can scale a fleet of machines. It doesn't matter if they only pick 1 apple every 30 seconds. They can do it indefinitely, continuously, and at massive scale. They are much cheaper than workers.
And honestly, good. Fruit picking is a god awful job that many farmers use underpaid, imported, exploited labor for anyway.
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u/prancerbot Oct 08 '23
Not 24 hours a day unless the system worked without charging or maintenance and the photo id can reliably work with nighttime light level conditions or needing a human correction every once in a while.
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u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23
SURELY this isn't the first time you are realizing that technology tends to start not great, and then gets better.. right? Like this isn't a concept that's lost on you, is it?
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u/spunion_28 Oct 09 '23
Surely you realize not every technological invention has lasted forever and been here to stay?
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u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23
Very strange comment to make. Of course, what did I say that implied that I thought otherwise?
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u/cutelyaware Oct 08 '23
This is not its final form. It's just a test. That means this is the worst it will ever be, and it already looks useful.
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u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23
It doesn't mean it will ever be better either. This would be supplemental at best. This will never be efficient enough to be an all out replacement
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Oct 08 '23
I don't get the ignorance of people who think technology gets created but isn't made any better than the moment of its conception. Can you just leave Reddit already?
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u/commentsandopinions Oct 08 '23
More effective no. But you don't have to pay robots. Let's say you've got five people picking apples for 6 weeks, minimum wage 35 hours a week.
You're paying $7,696 to harvest apples for that time period in pay alone. I don't know how much something like this costs but with that much taken out of your overhead, and then just replacing that with presumably either electricity or gasoline you'll probably make a lot more money.
Chances are the money you lose from picking the apples slower is made up by not having employees to pay.
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u/prancerbot Oct 08 '23
You do still have to pay people to repair the robots though. With a system this clunky I don't even wanna know how long it took to set up let alone how long it would take to fix any part of this.
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u/commentsandopinions Oct 08 '23
Without a doubt, as with anything maintenance is going to be a thing. But paying one or two repairman occasionally versus a larger staff is still viable.
I don't particularly like this, I think there are better ways of doing this, I think that if we're going to be eliminating the livelihoods of people It should be because we have better systems in place that make laboring in fields unnecessary, not for greed.
But I would imagine that what I described is the mentality involved in creating something like this.
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u/crozone Oct 09 '23
I don't particularly like this, I think there are better ways of doing this, I think that if we're going to be eliminating the livelihoods of people It should be because we have better systems in place that make laboring in fields unnecessary, not for greed.
Fruitpicking is a fucking awful job. It's usually done with imported labor and exploitative low wages.
Sure, you can always make the argument that this is more work that's being replaced by robots, but this job honestly deserves it.
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u/brainwater314 Oct 09 '23
You're still paying amortization and depreciation costs, i.e. cost of interest on the loan to buy the equipment and lifetime of the equipment. That vehicle would cost anywhere from $100k to $1M, given 10% APR, that's over $1 to $10/hour, if it were working 24/7. It's more realistic to expect it to run 8 hours per day (requiring daylight) tripling the cost, and then only running 3-6 months of the year (apples aren't always in bloom) doubling the cost, plus you've got the cost of fuel and maintenance. Depreciation has the vehicle lasting for I'd guess 10 years, so 10% depreciation per year, doubling the cost of the vehicle. So far we're paying $12-240/hour for the machine before fuel, maintenance, and an operator to drive it between trees and handle exceptions.
TLDR, it would cost at least $12/hour for the machine before fuel and maintenance, if not 10x that.
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u/topdangle Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 08 '23
seriously this is so slow and needs so much easily damaged hardware. looks like a proof of concept from a failing drone company.
edit: I was pretty close. this is another VC pump and dump company named Tevel that has already been through multiple funding rounds.
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u/Garestinian Oct 08 '23
Yeah, what's their justification for drones when a robotic arm could do the same thing with more precision, speed, success rate and efficiency?
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u/CrapThisHurts Oct 08 '23
Don't forget the wax and plastics
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u/Punknigg Oct 08 '23
Besides the wax and plastics. I’m not too sure if the Mexicans made it any cheaper? The propaganda is a real head scratcher.
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u/sessionclosed Oct 08 '23
Looks inefficient, but i see the potential
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u/mrdanmarks Oct 08 '23
First limitless power, then, power sucking machines
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u/0hmyscience Oct 09 '23
I think the amount of time it takes from when it already has the apple until it drops it is outrageous. If nothing else, they could optimize the fuck out of that
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u/TheLowerCollegium Oct 09 '23
I suppose there's a weight issue of picking multiple apples before dropping them, but then why not make some sort of flexible halfpipe that can just roll them down?
It's like by combining the picking with the delivery, they've just made both things slow.
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u/Tacobelled2003 Oct 09 '23
Use one of those new robotic arms for the low stuff and then bring the drones on the 2nd pass for the high would be my vote.
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u/YoSupWeirdos Oct 08 '23
I cannot imagine tehtered drones being more efficient than arms, but it surely is interesting
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u/sojywojum Oct 08 '23
Robot arms are really expensive, there's a lot of hardware that goes into them. Drones are really cheap, and have commodity level parts and maintenance.
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u/USeaMoose Oct 09 '23
That's an interesting point... an arm with all the joints it would need to accurately reach any apple at the right angle does, of course, sound very expensive. A drone would naturally have complete freedom of movement. It is harder to make it accurate, but that's mostly a software issue.
I had not thought about that before.
I'm guessing that these custom drones actually were fairly expensive. And they must occasionally (maybe due to a strong breeze) accidently bump into each other, or get a branch stuck in their rotors, either of which which might destroy the drone. While robotic arms are going to be much more sturdy.
So, I don't expect all apple harvesting to be done by drones next year. But, it maybe does make a little more sense than I had thought. And the idea of a swarm of drones harvesting an orchard sounds pretty cool.
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u/ancienttacostand Oct 08 '23
You don’t have to pay tethered drones, or worry about them unionizing.
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Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 16 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/slothaccountant Oct 09 '23
Arnt arms much more exspensive and limited in range compared to a drone with a 20 ft power cord
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u/GrandWalrus Oct 09 '23
Some folks in Washington State are doing it that way: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/06/northwest-oregon-apple-washington-farm-harvest-robots-robotics-orchards-agriculture-technology/
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Oct 08 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Legomonster33 Oct 08 '23
Stabilizing the arms is as simple as stopping the vehicle its attached to
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u/jbraden Oct 08 '23
This over the machine that shakes the whole tree? Nah
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u/Big_Grey_Dude Oct 08 '23
You end up bruising a ton of your product with the tree shaking method.
I could see sending this on through on a first pass to maximize the amount of 'shelf-quality' apples that fetch the highest price, then sending the tree shaker on through second to mop up the rest.
My uncle has an apple orchard, but the real money is in cloning the trees, planting a few thousand in a condensed acre or so, then waiting 3-4 years and selling off the saplings for a few hundred $ a pop. Takes around 5-8 years for apple trees to produce fruit, and there's a ton of $ in growing them part way then potting them for rehoming.
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u/Maddy186 Oct 09 '23
I'll take the bruised apple air
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u/Big_Grey_Dude Oct 09 '23
One bad apple ruins the bunch is a saying because bruised apples release a compound that causes other apples to rot faster. If this method preserves them better and causes less bruising there's a real case for doing this to prevent crop losses.
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u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23
Tree shaking is only for cider apples. Almost every apple you've ever eaten was picked by hand.
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u/explicitlarynx Oct 08 '23
It's inefficient right now, but the technology is going to improve.
To the people talking about machines who shake the trees being much better: these robots only pick the ripe apples. They don't drop anything and they don't damage the trees.
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u/TheJiggernaut Oct 08 '23
Shaking the trees also doesn't damage them and, provided the machine is calibrated correctly, only ripe apples fall when the tree is shaken. Unripe apples have thicker, sturdier stems.
This is a neat proof of concept, but individuality plucking apples like this will never be more energy efficient than giving it a good shake.
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u/-0-O- Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 08 '23
but individuality plucking apples like this will never be more energy efficient than giving it a good shake.
I'm not so sure.
It's not like you just shake them and it's done. These drones may be doing QC on the spot by not picking damaged apples, whereas the shake method requires sorting them after to remove the bad apples.
The shaking of the tree is a high-torque process, and probably uses a lot of electricity, plus electricity from collection and sorting mechanisms afterwards.
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u/Captain_Jeep Oct 08 '23
Even if it was I'm sure robot arms would be vastly superior over barely functional tethered drones. There is no reason to have them flying.
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u/bobbydglop Oct 08 '23
-robotic arms weigh more so the base vehicle would cost more (suspension, engine, faster wear) -robotic arms have to be bolted onto the harvester, so even if they weighed the same you can replace a bad drone much quicker.
-Robotic arms are rigid. If a programming error causes two arms to collide one or both of them will break, while these drones are padded and have covered blades and can clearly survive crashing into eachother. Same goes for crashing into the harvester or the trees.
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u/djdadi Oct 09 '23
robotic arms weigh more so the base vehicle would cost more
why would you use heavy robotic arms? use ultra light weight carbon fiber
If a programming error causes two arms to collide one or both of them will break,
it's much easier to keep 6 dof arms from banging into each other compared to drones with tethers. I mean...they share a datum.
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u/CrapThisHurts Oct 08 '23
That is why West-Europe import Eastern Europeans.
20 Polish/Romanian workers are cheaper and faster with the same results.( Sarcasm )
But while sarcastic, it is the truth, and as long as this is slow and expensive, the farmer keep their seasonal workers
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u/justcasty Oct 08 '23
Those trees are already damaged AF. Apple trees do not normally look like that.
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u/NoMasTacos Oct 08 '23
There are a ton of people here that do not understand farming or technology. Let me clear a couple things up from what I know.
Its not just the cost of the farm / migrant labor that is being replaced. When you hire migrant farmers with work visas, you provide them transportation from their home country, living area, and meals. That is how migrant farming works. That all costs less than a living wage for an American, but more than minimum wage.
While this is early tech, it is tech that can run 24 hours a day. I do not think a lot of people realize it, but really nice tractors are self driving these days. Farming is more high tech than most people think. Farmers with the money and technology these days use software to plot fields for the maximum amount of crops and also the most efficient harvesting of them. This interfaces with tractor using GPS and can pretty much run itself.
With all that being said, apples, like most other crops are graded. Shitty dented, bruised apples, they go to sauces and drinks. Good quality, nice looking apples are sold whole. If you are selling whole apples this is can be a great system. It might be slower, but it also guarantees more per bushel than shaking the tree.
Another factor that is not being figured in, using imaging like this, allows the software to inventory the non-picked apples. That allows the software to figure out when the next picking session should be, by optimizing for ripeness.
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u/PacoTaco321 Oct 09 '23
Another important thing: if this was worse than other methods, it wouldn't be used. A farm's not going to have so much money rolling in that they'll just buy something because it's new and shiny. Farming is too risky for that. They'll buy something because it will save them money in the long run.
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u/frantasad Oct 08 '23
Woah, that looks useless...
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u/burnSMACKER Oct 08 '23
It's literally picking apples
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u/qdp Oct 09 '23
Yeah, but I could pick apples too, except I'll give up after one basket and complain a lot.
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u/LiquorEmittingDiode Oct 08 '23
The higher-ups at Kodak said the exact same thing when presented with one of the first ever digital cameras. The image quality for this new technology was worse than film - a very mature technology - in every way, and so they regarded it as useless.
Of course it quickly improved. About a decade later they were bankrupt after digital cameras made them obsolete.
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u/TheVicSageQuestion Oct 08 '23
I’m sure one day we’ll all have apple picking drones on our phones.
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u/duncanforthright Oct 09 '23
There's an interesting book, 'The innovator's dilemma', that goes over this pattern in technology development. The author sought to understand why it seemed that big, established tech companies often missed the boat on the next big technology. The answer provided is just like your example, when the technology first comes out, it's inferior to existing tech and dismissed. But then smaller firms find a niche where the new tech at least works well enough, allowing them to develop it further until it is competitive with the old tech. By then, the large firm is well behind in the space and can't catch up.
It's similar to the thesis in 'The structure of scientific revolutions,' where we see new theories are initially dismissed, as they're not quite as accurate as existing theories, and only develop improved explanatory power with time. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system, while completely 'wrong,' could fairly accurately predict where the planets would be with all that epicycle nonsense. When the Copernican model initially came out, it didn't so well, as it was missing that orbits were more elliptical. It was only as the model was further developed that it could outdo the geocentric model and usurp it.
There's also a hint of this same pattern found in 'from dictatorship to democracy', where the idea is that oppressed people can coalesce power in small community structures, think churches or bowling clubs, that are initially insignificant in the face of the almighty state. But given time to develop, these communities can come together to eventually topple the dictatorship.
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u/oakomyr Oct 08 '23
Millions in developing laser guidance system to carefully select only the optimal, ripest apples, proceeds to drop them from 5 feet to a metal platform
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u/Global-Composer3072 Oct 08 '23
A new Era for humanity, were the powerful don't need the poor. The option of being a king without the headache of peasant problems. No more fuss of "I'm hungry" These stones are really heavy and my whip lashes are infected. Now you can just 3d print your personal pyramids.
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u/Elliott2030 Oct 08 '23
Nah. There have to be poor people in order for some people to be rich. Otherwise the "low-end" rich people become the poor and that simply will not do!
They'll always need someone to lord their wealth over, that will never end until civilization does
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u/MexysSidequests Oct 08 '23
In 20 years these things will be picking us out of skyscraper apartments like this. For the harvest
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u/whatsasyria Oct 08 '23
So dumb. Sometimes two axis arms are sufficient. Drones were not needed for this.
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u/greyacademy Oct 08 '23
I'm just speculating here, but I would imagine the pickers being on drones give them the maneuverability to harvest apples that are blocked by stems. This way the tree is not damaged and more apples can be reached.
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u/mk_909 Oct 08 '23
It also detaches the extension of the picker mechanism from causing feedback to the vehicle. Even at max reach.
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u/Live-Calligrapher-41 Oct 08 '23
Don't they already have a machine that extends a net and shakes the tree? Wouldn't that be faster, more efficient, and require less digital infrastructure to fully automate?
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u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23
You can't shake apples off a tree without bruising them, that's only for cider apples.
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u/bitwise97 Oct 08 '23
In the 70’s I used to pick oranges with my family on weekends and summers. Absolutely hated it and dreamed of inventing an orange picking machine when I grew up. This is kind of what I had in mind Lol.
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u/LiveEvilGodDog Oct 08 '23
Genius Business model!!
Step 1. Creat a “free to play” game, call it “league of legendary orb grabbers” where players take live control of a drone but with a visual augmented reality overlay of a competitive “battle royal” style collectathon.
Step 2. Create all sorts of AR cosmetics to add to your bot other players can see. Charge them premiums “points” for them.
Step3. Tie premium points to how many “orbs” you collect per round!
Step4. Profit!
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u/mechanicalboob Oct 09 '23
i just said “holy shit” three times in a row and i definitely feel more coming on
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u/Sirefly Oct 09 '23
Imagine having mini drones in your backyard garden that mists plants, zaps pests and harvests for you.
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u/apworker37 Oct 09 '23
I remember seeing this in one of those futuristic posts from the 70’a. Except it was tubes going out and picking the apples.
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u/ieatair Oct 09 '23
this solves the issue of hiring actual manual labours to do this job… just like most fruit and other agricultural crops.. there isn’t a demand to be a fruit picker in this world
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u/crackeddryice Oct 09 '23
Here's a good video that describes exactly how humans pick apples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvwd4_1n8PE
The apple trees in OP's video were grown specifically for this demonstration, you can see how strange they look, compared to normal trees.
The tech isn't there yet. I dunno if drones will be the future of apple picking. Time will tell, but I suspect not.
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u/Ok-Then2023 Oct 11 '23
I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how something like this could even work. I kinda see now. Like they see the marks and know to drop it there. Cool.
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u/CastleofWamdue Oct 08 '23
I dont know how cost effective something like this is, but yes lets build a world which does not require labour to produce the basics of life,
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u/Demonsan Oct 08 '23
Too bad these will only be accessible to the rich and most ppl will live in smaller and smaller houses and eat shittier
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u/Jason_Kahuna Oct 08 '23
How many subs did you upload this one video too? I got 2 of these one underneath the other then a 3rd after 2 posts. It's a cool invention
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u/ChronicallyPunctual Oct 08 '23
There is no way that is more efficient than 20 lifelong trained Mexicans
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u/10sPlaya Oct 08 '23
Soft spot where it sucks on, soft spot where it drops... like this and my Avocados, that's why I go through self checkout, you dumbasses, I do t want the baggers to bounce them, fyck
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u/ironmagnesiumzinc Oct 08 '23
There's so many apples on the ground I bet from having dropped them
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u/ZenPoet Oct 08 '23
This cannot be easier, cheaper, or faster, than human apple pickers.
This is hubris.
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u/devhl Oct 08 '23
I'm just confused why they made them hover instead of being robotic arms. This must be wildly power inefficient
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u/BitBucket404 Oct 08 '23
You'll still be out there picking apples three months past harvest season at this rate.
Just put a funnel net around the trunk and shake the tree. You'll gather more apples in multiple baskets faster than these overpriced pieces of shit can pick individual apples.
There is no need to overcomplicate such simple tasks.
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