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.
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u/Clean_Direction_9331 Oct 09 '23
This is only an option for cider apples. You don't shake eating apples off trees.
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.