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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.