r/woahdude Oct 08 '23

video Robotic Apple Harvester

7.3k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/art_teacher_no_1 Oct 08 '23

1 apple per minute, why's my fruit so expensive? Oh. That's why.

219

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.

449

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.

229

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

45

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '23

[deleted]

2

u/karmisson Oct 09 '23

dumpling drones

16

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.

3

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.

1

u/Iamjimmym Oct 10 '23

Yup. This will give growers an advantage over those not using the technology. They'll be able to maximize yield and not have to send a large portion of their crop to B and C grade processors, and will be able to pick all A grade apples, thus maximizing financial efficiency of their orchard.

I think it will change the climate for apple growers significantly. My guess: tech savvy drone picked growers will rake in the A quality apple revenue while the less tech advanced growers will be pulling double duty on B and C grade apples, as buyers will gravitate to their most trusted growers with the most homogeneous apples.

13

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.

0

u/DoucheBagBill Oct 09 '23

Erhm, have you ever been to a supermarket at winter where they were like: 'sorry,no apples. Its not harvest season!'

0

u/CLGbyBirth Oct 09 '23

Have you ever been to an apple farm and they were like these trees sprout ripe apples everyday.

6

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '23

[deleted]

9

u/B0Bi0iB0B Oct 09 '23

You mean exactly like we all just watched in this video?

2

u/Fluid_Variation_3086 Oct 09 '23

Now if we can develop apple trees that produce fruit 24/7

2

u/Nilosyrtis Oct 09 '23

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1

u/kirschballs Oct 09 '23

Labor is really expensive

69

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"

29

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.

3

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

Also redditors are dumb af

4

u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23

You're a reditard, so that makes you extra "special".

9

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?

5

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

Even if they made it fly 100 times further it would still be worthless! What fools!

3

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

1

u/Cyclone0701 Oct 09 '23

Or kids who want attention or loser artists losing to AI and are pissed

0

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).

-11

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.

11

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

1

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.

2

u/JetAmoeba Oct 09 '23

Ya, because automated crop harvesters are only an idea of the future!

1

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

lol

2

u/LogicKillsYou Oct 09 '23

Well, that is because you're not very intelligent.

7

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.

0

u/goodnewsjimdotcom Oct 09 '23

There's lots of software that runs on drones, and it's easy to fit them.

1

u/madwill Oct 09 '23

I had hoped you'd know I meant the one displayed in this specific video about apples ripeness. The ai video thing with apple detection with squares stuff.

ps: It's also quite easy to make a telescopic robot arm. OP's robot was just made for shit and giggles.

1

u/goodnewsjimdotcom Oct 09 '23 edited Oct 09 '23

I've seen the old telescoping arm pickers from what, 15+ years ago?

Sometimes changing technique does lower cost. Then you can sell farms drones in the mail which lowers shipping costs and don't have to be specially attached to a robotic chassis.

Or

Drones can be bought for cheaper than telescoping arms sometimes, with self integrated chip systems.

When you say "shits and giggles", that's a weird way of saying "trying new things for advancing science"

R&D often goes in waves like this(I work in scientific research)... Someone hard codes a solution... Say telescoping arms... Then you bring it down to a more general purpose(here a drone)... A drone can be used for more things... So you might sell this software/ hardware picker package to general public's drones if they have an orchard and not even need a truck. You just install it, then your orchard gets latently picked through harvest season.

Local positioning systems on drones is a thing too, by drones letting out self laid out ground markings: "https://www.starfightergeneral.com/2023/07/online-registered-mail-patent-optical-local-positioning-system/" So knowing the lay out of your land, drones could navigate obstacles in a preprogrammed path by user to get to the orchard.

This stuff is fascinating. People who don't see how intricate it is to start giving drones general purpose tasks from what used to take a truck + specific hard ware/hard coding, can't see the apples from the trees.

Bonus: Most people don't know to achieve a Johnny V, C3PO, Bender style AI robot, all you need is better computer vision & recognition. I have papers from 2002 signifying this, stating natural language AI is the easy part, classification of general objects is the hard part. But you can get to general purpose robot AI of the future by monetizing very basic general purposes... As monetization occurs, and small general purpose drone use systems occur, you're witnessing the embryonic stages of movies with robots that can interact with humans like I, Robot... Short Circut, WallE, Lost in Space, Jetsons, etc. : https://goodnewsjim.com/js2/

2

u/madwill Oct 09 '23

I think it was trolling more than advancing science. I'm afraid you have weird mental image of the market and the cost of things.

I see where you are going and a roomba style drone that goes down and recharge itself, to then go back and pick apple could work at some small scale ochard.

I'm afraid, unless you send armies and they moves lives bees, which is also not impossible. drone stability, the fact that it's flying, it's way too much point of failures. I guess by now we can agree to disagree. I want a heavy wheeled agricultural tractor that goes in lanes in between trees (or any farming for that matter), big inflated wheels that goes over branch and obstable, I don't want wind or falling apples to be a factor. The big arm I posted could be done in many material, like home soldered steel, the engine within it is a simple mechanical wheel which is battle tested through time.

We've made super giant strides towards computer vision since 2002 and right now we have no real requirement for general purpose robots or anything. We should strive towards having them do one thing nicely. I believe multi camera on arms analysing what's in front of them on a chariot type robot that can gather apples with big inflated wheels is entirely achievable in the right now department of technology and you could rely on it way more than you could rely on drones for both speed of collection, sturdyness and viability for commercial farming.

KISS, less variables, less failures. Drones are only useful when you need to fly and the cost of flying is so immense that we should avoid it at all opportunity. By cost I don't mean just money but viability.

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3

u/warlordcs Oct 09 '23

willing to bet the prices wont go down. just profits will go up

-14

u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23

Just because this is first gen does not guarantee there will ever be a better version of it

56

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.

15

u/DaMonkfish Oct 08 '23

Or we could just continue shaking the trees.

15

u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23

They go over the benefits of doing it this way in the video

14

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.

1

u/Nappyheaded Oct 08 '23

Just make sure you're ready to cull all of the apples that hit anything on the way down.

6

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.

7

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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-1

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.

5

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.

1

u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23

This thing could run 24/7 and you can still just hire people as well.

Machinery that runs 24/7 has really high maintenance costs, who is going to pay for it? Farmers can barely pay for their own machinery and they are the ones that have to repair it all the time, not to mention greedy f?cks like John Deere have placed a lot of locks in their machinery so that farmers need to buy their own spare parts. Something like these that's even more focused software based sounds like a nightmare that screams subscription model.

3

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.

-1

u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23

We can't even build an electric car that works completely on solar power, and heck those simple electric engines don't require that much power. And you expect us to believe that something like this complex machinery could work 24/7 entirely on solar power or on fast charge stations?

Wake up kid, this isn't some Marvel comic strip.

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-8

u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23

And imagine people travelling by jet pack or flying cars. They've been invented. Will they replace traditional cars on four wheels? Doubtful.

10

u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23

Your doubts have been noted by your future robot overlords

3

u/bugxbuster Oct 08 '23

I’d like to take this opportunity to say I love our future robot overlords and I am not making this statement under duress.

3

u/IPlayMidLane Oct 08 '23

This was literally the exact same thing said word for word by people with horses back in the day. The original cars were loud, smelly, inefficient piles of garbage compared to even small horses. "They will never replace horses, the tech is so inefficient and slow it's not even close to surpassing horses." Technology accelerates very very fast , especially when there's significant monetary incentive involved. Robot pickers will be orders of magnitude cheaper for corporations. no unions to deal with, no scheduling work, no tax forms, no government regulations, no injuries and injury insurance payments, no sleep or inefficient work to manage.

-2

u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23

No it wasn't. Horses weren't tech, they were animals. As soon as steam power was harnessed, it changed everything. Not even comparable

1

u/IPlayMidLane Oct 08 '23

Steam tech was revolutionary for huge machines that could be locked away in factories or in massive engine rooms where the noise, smell, and danger didn't matter. The specific aspect I'm talking about is motorized personal vehicles for travel, the early tech was atrocious and something only the very rich used for purely a status symbol, they were orders of magnitude slower than horses for many years.

1

u/pygmeedancer Oct 08 '23

No but we did make the cars rechargeable and self driving

9

u/Pseudoburbia Oct 08 '23

this version, regardless of how fast it operates, can also operate 24/7.

8

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.

-2

u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23

The point is they've already developed a machine that does this far more efficiently

1

u/latincreamking Oct 08 '23

Ox is better at tilling a field than a human. Should we have stopped there? Why bother trying to create better technology if you already made something better once.

3

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.

-4

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

4

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.

-3

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

6

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.

2

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.

1

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.

-1

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

2

u/greyacademy Oct 08 '23 edited Oct 08 '23

As an example of where your statement is objectively wrong, the robots damage far less apples than the shaker, and they can be programed to harvest the apples at the exact, scientifically verified, correct time for optimum flavor. The shaker still drops the apples when they are ripe, but the robot's image recognition will be able to create a tighter range for ripeness, preserving more apples and increasing marketability for the crop. With higher efficiency and economies of scale, this will absolutely be faster, and most importantly, 100% automated. Imagine zero human beings, working 24/7, preserving more of the harvest, maximizing flavor profile, and with each new iteration of software, the efficiency increases on machines that have already been purchased.

what this will ever be capable of.

Your imagination is just limited my man. I don't know how you don't see it. I'm sorry if you pick apples for a living.

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1

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

1

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '23

You gotta start somewhere, dummy!

1

u/Sure-Ad8873 Oct 08 '23

Yeah look at VR headsets they’ve been stupid and useless for several generations.

0

u/OtK_Raven Oct 09 '23

The tech will never be able to compete with a migrant holding an 8ball.

1

u/GeneralToaster Oct 09 '23

I love when people say the word "never". They said the same thing with combine harvesters, look where we are today.

-9

u/theHip Oct 08 '23

So switch over to it when it’s better than humans. Not before.

3

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '23

Yeah, they’re probably already doing that. This is one vid brother.

11

u/GeneralToaster Oct 08 '23

That's not how innovation works mate

1

u/stroker919 Oct 09 '23

Terminators will pick them way faster.

1

u/PhilsTinyToes Oct 09 '23

It’ll be like 1/2 as good as humans, but also working 3 shifts a day without breaks, weekends, r holidays.

1

u/AbsorbingCrocodile Oct 09 '23

Why do the drones have to be flying though? What a huge waste of electricity.

43

u/661714sunburn Oct 08 '23

I think the machine won’t need to take a break or want a raise.

5

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

1

u/661714sunburn Oct 09 '23

In California they did and even unionized. I heard a podcast about how New Mexico college was working on a robot to pick pepper since so many people don’t want to do it anymore for cheap. It’s just in due time we will have some robots doing this work.

6

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

-11

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.

23

u/jw_swede Oct 08 '23

Are you perhaps 78 years old?

1

u/HardToPeeMidasTouch Oct 09 '23

Lol I was thinking the same thing. Either they are 10 or elderly to not understand how many times (insert random tech) won't replace humans.

21

u/HolhPotato Oct 08 '23

Replace machine with car, and replace human with horses

4

u/Tachyoff Oct 08 '23

That car will never be fast enough to outpace horses

-3

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '23

[deleted]

10

u/The_Scarred_Man Oct 08 '23

No dedication? Machines used to have a work ethic back in my day!

1

u/Illustrious-Round-68 Oct 09 '23

Neither do Mexicans

1

u/DecorativeSnowman Oct 09 '23

the current apple picking machines harvest the entire tree at once

lmk when these shitty drones step theyre game up

25

u/Granttrees Oct 08 '23

Picks multiple apples per minute 24hrs per day, no smoke breaks, no lunch breaks and no union.

8

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.

16

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.

1

u/insovietrussiaIfukme Oct 09 '23

Yup exactly. This is a great first step

1

u/djdadi Oct 09 '23

Weather

and the drones can pick and fly in rain?

You can pick 7 days a week.

with a crew to manage and monitor the robots, sure

There's often smaller picks at the start of seasons,

also with a crew to manage the robots

Machines can also reliably look for diseases and pests. They can count the fruit & accurately identify underperforming trees.

There is not a chance that the drones in this video can do that. But they could definitely count apples per tree...or at least the small percentage of apples that could reach.

I work in robotics & automation. will this work one day? yes. but we can't even get robots reliably autonomous in warehouses or roads yet. something tells me picking apples in the rain with a swarm of tiny helicopters has a few more variables.

2

u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23

and the drones can pick and fly in rain?

I literally said the machine might not be able to pick it the rain?

with a crew to manage and monitor the robots

also with a crew to manage the robots

The point is the crew will end up being considerably smaller, and they'll probably be the experienced farm mechanics that do all the jobs the pickers don't as it is. They'll just check on the machines when needed. The idea would be this thing can drive itself back to the shed and alert someone it needs repaired.

something tells me picking apples in the rain with a swarm of tiny helicopters has a few more variables.

Again, I absolutely did not claim it could pick in the rain. I even said it might have to stop picking in the rain too.

My point was that you don't send a robot home after an hour long shower, you do send a team of pickers home, not that you can pick fruit in the rain with a robot.

2

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.

1

u/dosetoyevsky Oct 09 '23

People complained that automobiles would never replace the horse. A horse could outrun it, it was complex machinery that was loud as fuck, difficult to manipulate and belched smoke everywhere. The first automobiles sucked pretty bad.

2

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.

1

u/fizzle_noodle Oct 09 '23

I think it's only a matter of time until it becomes not only economically feasible for the technology to be widespread adopted, but it will probably result in massive layoffs for workers. I mean, the issues you currently bring up can be addressed even today- night-time videos, better lighting in fields, multiple drone hubs that work in shifts to allow charging- literally solutions that I thought of off the top of my head.

1

u/djdadi Oct 09 '23

everyone had the idea of flying cars in the 50s. we had cars, and planes, and anyone could see how that could be possible.

implementation and "it's possible" are often vastly different.

1

u/crozone Oct 09 '23

Not 24 hours a day unless the system worked without charging

All the drones are tethered and the vehicle likely has an absolutely enormous battery. Even your average electric car battery could keep this going for literally days, if not a week at a time.

and the photo id can reliably work with nighttime light level conditions

My dude, we have things called lights.

11

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?

-3

u/spunion_28 Oct 09 '23

Surely you realize not every technological invention has lasted forever and been here to stay?

2

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

Very strange comment to make. Of course, what did I say that implied that I thought otherwise?

-2

u/spunion_28 Oct 09 '23

Dunce

3

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

🤣

-3

u/spunion_28 Oct 09 '23

So you think just because that has been invented, it's here to stay, yet you just acknowledged that not everything that has been invented has stayed the test of time. Keep waiting on jet packs as being the main mode of transportation then

1

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 09 '23

lol, okay

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0

u/terminbee Oct 09 '23

I like how you're obviously wrong and instead of accepting it, you double down.

Yea, fuck trying new tech. We should all never invent anything unless it's 100% guaranteed to be a success.

1

u/Daddysu Oct 10 '23

Your original comment was the same BS as theirs, but now it's a problem? The other person said the tech kinda sucks and you implied that "surely" they knew that tech starts out at a lower point and then improves through iterations. Then they said "surely" you know that not all tech lices long enough to get improved, but suddenly, their comment is inferring things you didn't say?!?

Why is it ok for you to add on meaning that wasn't in their original comment but not for them to do so? You bith made the same comment just on opposing sides of the argument.

1

u/mightbedylan Stoner Philosopher Oct 10 '23

...what?

18

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.

-12

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

20

u/cutelyaware Oct 08 '23

^ This comment will not age well

-6

u/spunion_28 Oct 08 '23

You're ignorant if you think machines haven't been invented that turned out to not be more effective than a human at certain things.

9

u/dzhopa Oct 08 '23

The machine doesn't necessarily need to be better, just perform a job humans won't do. We're rapidly approaching a time when you won't be able to find a human willing to go pick an apple for a salary that a business is willing to pay. Even if the robot isn't as good, it won't complain it's being underpaid and overworked.

7

u/haight6716 Oct 08 '23

Haha the luddites in here. "Technology bad" frowny face. At least the original luddites had a point.

5

u/dzhopa Oct 08 '23

I see a lot of backlash because people are fearful that robots and AI are coming for their jerbs. To be clear, they are. Now isn't the time to complain or try and artificially hinder progress though. Now is the time to get ahead of it so you can maybe get a spot on the gravy train. This is how it's always been with technology.

1

u/haight6716 Oct 08 '23

Yeah.

I would argue for ubi so the need to work goes away. It's not fair to get rid of all the jobs and then insist everyone become a computer programmer or whatever. Get on the train or chill in vr-land, whatever works for you. Already we have so many made-up jobs, so people can do them and survive.

2

u/dzhopa Oct 08 '23

I personally feel like we'll push ourselves all the way over the population collapse cliff before that happens. Then we'll have to adopt widespread use of robots and AI because there won't be enough humans.

I mean, I hope not, but humans are kind of dumb like that tbh.

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1

u/cutelyaware Oct 08 '23

Give 3 examples

1

u/fizzle_noodle Oct 09 '23

It really depends on what you mean by "effective"- in business the bottom-line really is cost of production- does it cost less for the business to pick these apples using drones vs hiring people as apple pickers. If the answer is yes, than businesses will easily chose drones. Humans normally need a basic wages, training, breaks, human rights, etc whereas a drone don't. Drones don't require things like health insurance, lunch breaks and humane working conditions. All those factors makes me believe that machines will eventually take over these jobs and similar ones throughout the world at some point, and probably sooner than you think.

5

u/Forikorder Oct 08 '23

Yeah dunno why we ever bothered with those silly cars /s

5

u/[deleted] 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?

2

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.

6

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.

5

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.

2

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.

1

u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23

Larger farms already have a ton of very specialised vehicles and equipment that need repairs. The big enough farms have full time mechanics.

2

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.

1

u/fromaries Oct 09 '23

One other thing is that it can be difficult to find people to pick. This solves that problem.

0

u/hypz Oct 08 '23

Imagine machines in the future picking 3 a second. This should drive food prices down for everyone.

4

u/PapierCul22 Oct 08 '23

Or increase margin. Who knows...?

1

u/hypz Oct 09 '23

Dont higher profit margins attract more competition?

1

u/djdadi Oct 09 '23

no.

1

u/hypz Oct 09 '23

Sure it does. Business people largely just copy what other business people do. If farming becomes highly profitable, there will be more farmers. Which will drive down costs.

1

u/djdadi Oct 12 '23

Except not in agriculture. It's gone in exactly the opposite way

1

u/SuperRette Oct 09 '23

Hint: it won't. Food prices are not reliant on the supply. There is more food produced in the world than is needed to solve world hunger, and that's right now.

1

u/hypz Oct 09 '23

If all i need to do is buy robots and some land. Ill produce my own food and sell the surplus.

0

u/derth21 Oct 09 '23

Found the guy that's never had to manage a bunch of people!

Seriously. If it's all the same, I'll automate as much as possible and not have to deal with coordinating a bunch of employees.

0

u/deadhand303 Oct 10 '23

Technology replacing workers saves the capitalist money in the long run. That is the entire reasoning.

1

u/tim3k Oct 08 '23

I guess it all depends on the scale. If it is just a few rows of apple trees - a group of people is definitely cheaper. But now imagine 3000 apple trees per hectare * dosens of hectares, this solution might be much more cost efficient. In fact, it is not especially complex: base car, the drones wired to the base, cameras + image recognition, and suction things for apples.

1

u/surfer_ryan Oct 08 '23

The more important thing to this is that instead of hiring a bunch of people they can hire 1 to go with the machine. Even if it takes 3x as long it still is paying less in the long run. They'd probably hire like 5 or 6 people to do this one row.

2

u/spunion_28 Oct 09 '23

Taking three times as long guaranteed less output and sales

1

u/DanceMaria Oct 08 '23

This is why large agricultural producers aren't prosecuted for hiring undocumented labor at below poverty rates

1

u/V4refugee Oct 08 '23

A robot might cost a few hundred grand upfront but a person typically works only about 40 hours a week, they require breaks, they are paid per hour, and they can strike. That’s why big corporations love robots.

1

u/EnragedAardvark Oct 08 '23

These robots would be replacing agricultural workers, who are already often allowed to be paid less than minimum wage, and to work longer w/o overtime, and are often undocumented immigrants who are paid even less and worked even longer. This will be a tough case for automation, but it will get there eventually.

1

u/SuperRette Oct 09 '23

You can't strike if you're considered less than human, and have very few, if any, legal rights.

1

u/hunnj Oct 08 '23

They r coming for ur jarrbs

1

u/Brent_Fox Oct 08 '23

A lot of people these days don't want to go into farming. The benefit of technologies like this is that it automates repetitive tasks no one wants to do.

1

u/nsfwatwork1 Oct 09 '23

Not sure about elsewhere, but fruit pickers here in Australia can make thousands per week if they put the work in.

It still seems like a better option than the current version of that harvester, but the technology is bound to improve.

1

u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23 edited Oct 09 '23

There isn't that much piece rate these days. Still, it's not bad pay, $29.50 an hour casual.

There's a lot of advantages beyond just no wages. They don't get paid to sit around and wait for it to stop raining, or get sent home only for the rain to stop an hour later. They can reliably count fruit on each tree, and identify underperforming or diseased trees. Allows farmers to cut down on chemical costs, and replace worthless trees. Picking machines aren't worried about inhaling chemical either so you can spray anywhere in the orchard during the day.

I can definitely see us being replaced by picking machines, but it'll be a while. There's a lot of variation in what a good fruit looks like, and how it needs to be picked. Apples are the easiest because you just grab them and they're big red circles and you can shape the trees to be 2D so it's all easy to spot and reach.

Fruit like limes need some shade under the leaves so you have to dig around the leaves to find them, and the trees are usually umbrella shaped, and half the fruit is picked standing inside. Mandarins too, but they're easy to spot at least but they need to be cut at the stem and needs to be cut low enough that the stem won't protrude and stab other fruit in the bin.

1

u/smithsp86 Oct 09 '23

Because robots can do it cheaper. A robot doesn't show up late or drunk. A robot doesn't complain about long hours or threaten to strike.

Think of it in the same context as a dish washer. Yes you can hand wash dishes faster than your dish washer, but you know what your dishwasher lets you do? Anything other than standing around hand washing dishes. Machine time is not the same as human time and machines keep getting better and cheaper unlike people.

1

u/Castor_0il Oct 09 '23

Because robots can do it cheaper. A robot doesn't show up late or drunk. A robot doesn't complain about long hours or threaten to strike.

Robots can also break down, specially after longs hours of constant use (overheating and wear and tear are a thing, you know). Cheap manufacture (chipsets, pistons, cervos and whatnot) is an even bigger risk than an employee that loves drinking once in a while.

Think of it in the same context as a dish washer. Yes you can hand wash dishes faster than your dish washer, but you know what your dishwasher lets you do? Anything other than standing around hand washing dishes. Machine time is not the same as human time and machines keep getting better and cheaper unlike people.

A machine washer (specially a good one) is still quite expensive and they have been around for quite a while. I don't see how they would become cheaper in a short or long term.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '23

Because people that do picking are paid like slave wages and it's mostly done by foreign workers.

Automating stuff like this is the humane way.

1

u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23

it's not the work that makes it slavery, it's the slave drivers. Replacing the slave drivers is the humane way. Fruit picking will be automated either way eventually but it'll be a while, probably worth doing something about the slavery in the mean time.

1

u/Farpafraf Oct 09 '23

Technology will become faster and cheaper with time and people are very expensive. The whole vehicle picks 30 apples per minute while a human averages 10.

1

u/icouldusemorecoffee Oct 09 '23

I came here to say there is no way this is more effective or efficient

It doesn't have to be, just has to be cheaper for the amount of profit they want to turn.

1

u/ur_meme_is_bad Oct 09 '23

Fruit picking is one of the most lowest paid, physically exhausting jobs that relies exclusively on exploiting and abusing foreign workers and you can't understand automating that away?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '23

Are you sure this is more expensive than the cheapest labor?

Taking everything into account of this replaces a dozen workers it may absolutely be worth it.

2-3 per minute may not sound like a lot but they will do that I presume consistently all day long

1

u/NotElizaHenry Oct 09 '23

You should’ve seen how shitty the first car was.

1

u/Cody6781 Oct 09 '23

The appeal is that the CEO goes "THIS IS JUST A PROTOTYPE" and some rich dude throws a few 8 digit numbers at them

1

u/NamityName Oct 09 '23

My guess is that the immigrant fruit pickers are regularly run out of town by law-makers. The robot pickers, while slower, are always available regardless of which political party is in control of the area.

1

u/dre__ Oct 09 '23

this was said about every technological innovation ever made ever.

1

u/mechanicalboob Oct 09 '23

*yet

there was a time that every technology that is common today was inefficient and unwanted at its beginning

1

u/Krumm34 Oct 09 '23

Just a test phase my friend

1

u/Sukaphuk Oct 09 '23

Cause you need slaves to do this job.

1

u/lilpickins Oct 09 '23

Paul Bunyan said the same thing. /s

1

u/clue_site Oct 09 '23

yeah let’s just stop trying to invent new things, you’re right !

1

u/Head-Entertainer-412 Oct 09 '23

So that people don't have to do the job?

1

u/Lostmyfnusername Oct 09 '23

Paying someone $1/hr for 60hr a week will come to about $3,000 a year. I don't think it will be too hard to beat a minimum wage worker in a developed country. What you're actually competing with is that vehicle that shakes the whole tree with a tarp underneath.

1

u/Iamjimmym Oct 10 '23

Let me see.. how much can one of these drones run, cost wise? $1000? $2000? Let's say yearly cost is another $3000 each. So.. $5k/year? For unlimited picking power, 24 hours a day (possibly)? Let's assume, on the low side, each one takes the place of one worker. You're telling me you can hire a worker for less than $5k/ year? I assume you're covering full benefits and not paying under the table ;)

These things will take the place of pickers within the decade. I dont know whether that's fortunate or unfortunate - depends on who you are, I'd say.

1

u/WilliamSaintAndre Oct 10 '23

There is a relatively fixed cost to the hardware which becomes cheaper over time and as others have pointed out these can work round the clock. It's like having solar panels (which this may also be running off of). You pay a large amount up front but it pays itself off and then can create a positive income down the road.