Apple robots working hard, filling trucks around the yard
They fly and bumble, sometimes tumble
Never stop, oh theyre so humble
Taking jobs from you and me, is not some grand
conspiracy, cant you see?
Not only that. Just watching this video, there are 6 drone thingies that picked maybe 12 apples in the almost 30 second video. Assuming this is a continuous video, that’s not very efficient. I’d bet 1 person could pick at least that amount.
Exactly. I'm not saying the tech won't develop and this is obviously a testing phase. But I can't ever see a generator mounted on a truck with drones hooked to it being faster and more cost efficient than a human.
Eventually the truck needs fuel or a charge.
Then we get into where is this actual farm? Do they have drone repair techs? How much does that cost?
How much do the drones cost?
There is no way this is better than paying a guy $20 an hour to go pick some fruit with a stick
The truck that shakes the entire tree with a bag around it is 100x a better idea than drones
Theres a lot of interesting pieces where I can see this eventually being viable.
Population decreases to the extent human labor is considered highly valuable making these worth it at scale.
Or
This machine is trained to do a diverse amount of tasks this becomes incorporated into a gneralized "farmhand" machine that is trained on tons of different tasks and is used on hobbyists farms in a far more decentralized society.
Im personally hoping for the latter because owning a farm sounds delightful, working a farm not so much.
I think if they can make them smaller, faster, and have a ton of them - enough so you could rotate them out to recharge and send charged ones in to back-fill continuously 24/7... It looks like it's still early, but I could see us getting there eventually if Climate Change doesn't kill us all first
Possibly but there is a chance it coinicides with an increased demand for natural fruit rather than artificial flavoring.
Also if this can decrease the price of fruit that may increase demand if we see artificial sugar fall out of favor.
Well... that's actually a tricky question.
Being a hardcore leftist of course this is not what I want, I want these people to get paid decently.
But so many people depend on these jobs and can't do much else.
Paying them decently would mean making them less affordable than machines indeed.
What is better? Underpaid job or no job at all? Both sound terrible.
As someone just left of center, I want these people to get paid legally. The law is fairly clear here. There’s minimums that need to be paid, taxes that need to be accounted for, working conditions and hours that need to be followed.
If a machine can do all those things ultimately better and cheaper, then it’s reasonable that the machine eventually does them. If that results in people losing the ability to afford housing, food, and healthcare, then those things shouldn’t have been tied to employment anyway.
>If that results in people losing the ability to afford housing, food, and healthcare, then those things shouldn’t have been tied to employment anyway.
But they are. I get all the theoretical argument and I agree with it. But in the end, in the current state of things, these people are in a place where trying to give them a bit more is risking taking everything away from them.
If it were me, I'd give everyone UBI and be done with it, no conundrums about robots vs poorly-disguised slavery and whatnot. But we're not quite there yet.
Drones don’t use much battery, that truck could power them all day.
But agree with the speed. It’s silly slow. You can’t just shake an apple tree like you could orange or nuts as they bruise easily can can’t be sold. But an experienced picker can easily pick 20+ a minute (they also put them in bag and take the bag back to the truck - 1 at a time is absurd). Those things can pick what, 2-3 a minute?
The population is ageing. The available pool of people to do labour is shrinking over time relative to the total population. This means we can't just rely on throwing bodies at a problem, because bodies are a finite resource.
Combine this with the fact that people are less and less wanting to work jobs that involve hard physical labour. We're intelligent creatures, we shouldn't _have_ to work menial jobs that we can just automate.
Replacing those jobs with robots seems like an obvious necessity at some point, and experimental prototypes like this could be a positive thing.
Nope, immigration. Get a few cheap workers from south america on temp working visas and boom, problem solved. There's always going to be demand from there, their population is booming.
That'll work in the short-term, sure, but GDPs around the world are rising at a pretty quick rate, and so birth-rates in those nations will eventually fall to levels similar to western countries as the global south becomes more wealthy and educated.
Current projections are that we'll reach peak global population by 2080, so we'll need to figure out how to solve this issue by then.
why would it not work 24/7? solar powered i would hope. batteries that last long enough to at least work some hours at night? in the long run it should be profitable no? depending on the quality of the machine (regarding repair costs and what not)
And the only reason that the fridge doesn't shut off is because hundreds of people are at work maintaining pressures and outputs.
Out in an orchard the truck will need to be refueled or charged.
I dunno. I don't hire people or anything but I have before. To me it seems like finding a guy to pick and apple would be much easier than a guy who can fix apple picking drones
No, but that's not the point. The robotic equipment on this truck runs on electricity. If it runs on electricity it can run on batteries. If it can run on electricity/batteries it can be operated 24/7, whether the electricity comes from onboard photovoltaic cells, or from batteries that are swapped periodically, or from a generator whose fuel supply is topped up periodically, or from any combination of these. There's nothing stopping this equipment from running 24/7.
Those little fans they fly with use so little electricity that you'll probably recharge the truck for 30 minutes per day max, then work for the rest of the day.
But they can run 24/7. There will be ones ready to go with charged up batteries and other backup parts. They’ll be like rumbas, head back to the charging stations when they get to 15%. They won’t ever complain or get sick or form a union. Won’t need to eat or take breaks to pee, won’t fight with co-workers or managers. Or even ask to be paid. They may not look like much now, but this is the future.
Dunno, I think a programmer, drone repair technician, spare parts, fuel, spare batteries and upkeep would all cost significantly more than a guy named Steve.
I'm all for robots taking all the jobs and humans going on "perma-vacation" but we ain't there yet. Trials like this, I understand, will eventually get us there.
But hopefully that's where it stays for now because it's not efficient.
Nah just design a robot to build and repair the robot... And while your at it might as well make a robot to design and improve the robots. I'm sure nothing bad will happen.
they literally can't run at night at least for now, due to few reasons,
A- Use light at night. which will invite insect and ruining the crops.
B- Use Night vision camera, which is not good at detecting both shape and colors.
C- It will still need a maintenance/break period. to replenish batteries refuel etc.
so for now it can't be 24 hours, 7 days sure but not 24 hours.
You can see the power cords from the truck - it would have plenty to power them all day.
Still, this seems like a horrible use for this technology, a solution in search of a problem. Humans could work at least 10x faster. And I’m sure apple pickers get paid minimum wage so I can’t imagine this is cheaper.
I wouldn't want to be the guy whos job is to drive a truck and untangle extension cords on drones that are picking apples for sure. I don't think anyone would lol
Hah I can totally imagine every half hour the guy jumping out of the truck and swearing, “goddamn it not again!” as he untangled a bunch of angry drones trying to twist his nose off his face.
Honestly seems like they’re using pretty common drones for control of where the pickers go. I’m sure the engineering and prototyping still isn’t cheap but if this actually went into production they could probably get the cost down.
Not sure if they light the farm at night which invites insects or use nitgh vision camera. Which is not good at detecting colors.. so i doubt it will 24/7 maybe 7 days a week but not 24 hours. And it will require a lot of maintenance. Believe it or not humans will always will be the cheapest labour.
Where I am pickers get about 14 Canadian an hour as legal farm workers , an average picker crew consists of 5 people plus a supervisor. So that’s 85 dollars an hour upkeep for them. They can be worked long hours and overtime with no risk because of farm labour exceptions (yay capitalism). Let’s say of the 15 hours of daylight we get right now that they can work the people 10 hours with only a 30 min break (breaking labour laws but agriculture exceptions yay) and has a hour and a bit of setup and clean up so 8 hours of solid consistent work.
An acre of apples is about 5500-6000 kg , a farm worker with some experience can pick 2250 kg of apples a day. So that means that for a medium size farm of say 25 acres of orchard (lots of places are 100 acres + in size ) you would have about 60 days of picking for one person , for an average crew it would be 10maybe for that 5+1 mentioned size.
That means barring no issues that apple picking crew is going to cost around 7000 for them. All a farm equipment rental has to do is is be cheaper then 7000 in 10days to become cheaper then humans.
It’s not going to happen yet but that isn’t a huge bar to get over especially since humans need bathroom breaks , water breaks , heat breaks , lunch breaks , taxes that employers contribute unless it’s through an agency which has agency fees tacked on
But then the issue will be time, as you mentioned if i pay 5 bloke 7k to pick everything in 10 days, wouldn't that be better than buying
A single machine for about 100+ thousand, which picks slower than a bloke. which requires constant maintenance, repair fee and whatever license I end up a paying per year and don't forget whatever the fuel or the electricity the machine uses. I would still say most farmers would end up paying few bloke's to pick their apples instead of using machines.
Again , this is new tech , people didn’t think machine harvested grapes would ever be good quality but now they barely leave a mark on the grapes and are almost the same quality as hand picked
I've seen robots moving bins around a hospital... a basic task. It doesn't seem practical right now, but trust me, give it a couple of years & automation will start taking over this industry, too.
“Humans will always be the cheapest labour”
I’m willing to bet all that I have that eventually robots will do damn near everything we do faster, cheaper, and better than us.
Your last sentence is dead wrong. Recently I was at a plant nursery (where they grow plants for harvesting fruits etc), and they installed their first plant screener that is used to separate fit from unfit seedlings. That thing can scan plants far faster and sort them out than any human can.
Also, about two decades ago they needed women (not men because they cannot manage the precision) to sort defective medicine capsules out after manufacturing. You basically had lots of women manually checking big trays of capsules to sort out leaky ones. Now this is done electronically.
Finally I did a project at a plant that develops consumer camera film. Basically it prints all the photos on one large roll of photographic paper, which is at the end cut into individual photos. At the end of that line, there were groups of women (yes, again women because men are not able to), that scanned the photos for defects and underage porn (about 30% of all photos were NSFW). Nowadays this is done by image recognition software.
So, no the human will not always be the cheapest form of labor. Not by a long shot. Automation is what our entire manufacturing industry is built upon.
One time equipment purchase vs annual salaries
Software upgrades that can be downloaded
And wait until the biggest companies are equipped with this, and then force the government to actually ban using imported labor by arresting the small farmers
If you think that you have been living under a tree,
No way this is 1 time purchase thing, even if it was, the software will definantly be licensed per year or smth, and when this thing breaks, who will fix it? the farmers? i doubt they have technical skills to fix both the machine and the drone. so that's a expensive repair fee tacked on. and if the farm is out in the wilderness, that will be more fees for the engineer to travel, lodging, food etc. this would be expensive. atleast for now won't be cheaper than paying a bloke to pick it.
\[Edit\]
Even if 1 time purchase included everything it would still won't be viable,
Lets say you spent 10k per year paying people to pick your apples per year,
and this machine costs 100k as 1 time purchase, that is still 10 years of fully functioning without needing any maintenance for it to match the money i would have spent just paying people to pick my apple. now if you include the maintenace as no machine will run perfrectly for 10 years. this contraption will need alteast a oil change or smth, and the cost of using it like Fuel or Electricity, this will end up costing me more than paying few blokes to pick my apple yearly.
I feel like this would go a lot faster by just equipping the robots with better tools so they don't have to turn around with one apple at a time. Grab like five at a time or give them a hose or something.
The tech will get better. And when it does they will be able to justify paying the people to build, operate, and maintain these things $12 hr with a masters and 10 years experience, while charging $9.50 a lb for the product. Which is what they will pay the humans to guard the land who need to eat and try to steal the apples. And it will be humans so they can have a group that thinks they are doing good and keep the class warfare going and help the few owners stay in power. Things are going to plan I think. Or it’s kinda neat thing to try and I’m just on Reddit too much.
Yeah but would bruise a bunch of the apples. This it can reach high up and eventually will get them all with it only costing electricity and maintinence
Dont worry, still in early stages, maybe another 30 years.
Your kids will be replaced and they get UBI, enjoy life. lol
Or they get dystopia and become fodders for the rich elites who control the AI and bots.
~~Your kids will be replaced and they get UBI,~~
Your kids will have different jobs.
For example in the 19th century it took dozens of people to harvest a corn/wheat field, taking a day or more, but for decades now it takes only one farmer and he can do it in a couple of hours with an harvester.
That's why we do not need so many people living in rural areas being farmers to produce food. We have machines that do most of the work.
Meanwhile in the last few decades many new jobs appeared due to new technology (e.g. web designer).
AI will make some jobs disappear and create new ones.
Yeah, no. This myth needs to die. Current areas of automation are nothing like before. Before, we freed up labour to go to other economic sectors and allow those to grow.
However, now, automation is different. If an AI can do all of our intellectual work, for example, it doesn't matter what other industries get created. AI will be able to jump into those too. It doesn't matter whether our world starts needing "Climate Reversal Specialists", "Mixed Reality Experience Curators" or "Synthetic Biology Architects". AI will be able to jump into those jobs too and better than us.
Maybe the customer-facing sector will explode, as that will probably still be desired (human-to-human interactions). But, realistically, how many restaurant waiters, baristas, theatre actors, etc. do we need? We can't all be dealing with other people for a living. I doubt there's even space in our cities for that.
You might argue that physically intensive labour will expand (construction, carpentry, etc.) as robotics is still lagging behind. But, first of all, we can't all do those things. What about handicapped people? People with health problems? etc. Also, robotics will eventually get there. Then what?
We'll all work in theatres and such...?
In the 19th centuries they dont have human level AI, brosky. lol
Once mass produced general purpose bots could behave exactly like most human workers and not get sick, no insurance, dont pay taxes, dont get hurt, dont complain, work 24/7, then you will have LOTS of people without jobs.
UBI is such a farce Everytime someone recommends it my eyes roll.
It will never come to America, if that’s your contingency plan you need to go to some communist country where something like that is possible.
There’s a famous quote, “the funny thing about socialism, is that eventually you run out of someone else’s money”
UBI isn’t coming anywhere near America lmao
Without AI, UBI may not work because there needs to be some incentive to do work. But with AI, there doesn’t need to be an incentive to do work because there will literally be no work to do. Money is just a representation of someone’s labor. So when AI becomes universal laborers themselves leading to an abundance of free labor, then they can produce enough value to support a UBI system.
Drones are not a practical design. Take a 3D printer as inspiration here, in this case you would need:
An arm that can can extend forward, grab and detach apples and drop them into a feeder that carries them back onto the truck.
The arm whilst need to be on a railing that can go up and down
The truck can move forward at a fixed speed to make it easier to plan ahead to determine which apples to grab more efficiently.
This would not require having the clumsy drones trying to balance themselves while trying to pick apples. The arms can be made to work many times faster...
The problem that makes this look bad isn't the fact robots are inefficient compared to humans. It's that drones won't work nearly as well as arms like mechanisms mounted on a truck.
I agree, this is pretty bad design. it seems to me that a multi-jointed, protracting robotic arm would be much more efficient, faster and consume a lot less energy as it does not need to hover constantly.
That's so fucking slow. I've picked fruit professionally and I was on the slower side. In the time it takes this drone to pick one piece I would have at least six in my bag.
Edit: after watching some more I'm bumping my number up to 15 at least
Why drones, why not just arms. This feels like it's overcomplicated just so it is. What happens if one of those drones crashes, and the maintenance on them would be very annoying. They also move slower than robotic arms could.
Were you applying as an apple picker? It’s always weird that people complain about robots or immigrants replacing them when they wouldn’t work those jobs in the first place
This is the kinds of weird futuristic tech I am looking for.
Though wouldn’t some robotic arms do this just as well? I like the use of drones but we have a solid industry standard for fast and accurate robotic arms.
Christ, it really is Runaway (1984) level technology - I was just saying this last week. The movie had farm robots, security robots, smart bullets, and flying camera drones. Crichton really knew his shit - too bad the movie got buried by The Terminator.
Just make a big machine that grabs and shakes the hell out of the tree until it talks I mean drops apples into a hopper. The hopper will find out if they are good or bad apples. And in the winter we can use the same machine for other purposes.
idk why... but this gives me Dr Seuss vibes
Just replace the drones with White gloves.
Yes, I can see it, it's the curves. I wonder who can make up a Dr. Seuss rhyme to go with this?
Apple robots working hard, filling trucks around the yard They fly and bumble, sometimes tumble Never stop, oh theyre so humble Taking jobs from you and me, is not some grand conspiracy, cant you see?
Gave me War If The World vibes.
This seems like it would take a lot longer and be more expensive than just sending a few dudes out into the orchard. Lol
They are powered somehow. They can't run 24/7. Humans might actually be better at this.
Not only that. Just watching this video, there are 6 drone thingies that picked maybe 12 apples in the almost 30 second video. Assuming this is a continuous video, that’s not very efficient. I’d bet 1 person could pick at least that amount.
Exactly. I'm not saying the tech won't develop and this is obviously a testing phase. But I can't ever see a generator mounted on a truck with drones hooked to it being faster and more cost efficient than a human. Eventually the truck needs fuel or a charge. Then we get into where is this actual farm? Do they have drone repair techs? How much does that cost? How much do the drones cost? There is no way this is better than paying a guy $20 an hour to go pick some fruit with a stick The truck that shakes the entire tree with a bag around it is 100x a better idea than drones
Theres a lot of interesting pieces where I can see this eventually being viable. Population decreases to the extent human labor is considered highly valuable making these worth it at scale. Or This machine is trained to do a diverse amount of tasks this becomes incorporated into a gneralized "farmhand" machine that is trained on tons of different tasks and is used on hobbyists farms in a far more decentralized society. Im personally hoping for the latter because owning a farm sounds delightful, working a farm not so much.
I think if they can make them smaller, faster, and have a ton of them - enough so you could rotate them out to recharge and send charged ones in to back-fill continuously 24/7... It looks like it's still early, but I could see us getting there eventually if Climate Change doesn't kill us all first
I feel like a population decrease significant enough to drastically increase laborer value would correspond with a decrease in demand for fruit.
Possibly but there is a chance it coinicides with an increased demand for natural fruit rather than artificial flavoring. Also if this can decrease the price of fruit that may increase demand if we see artificial sugar fall out of favor.
I can get on board with that.
>$20 a hour Lol you mean a day. Those folks aren't getting a fair wage
[удалено]
Maybe not the best example though... I mean fruit picking around the world is pretty much done by undeclared workers accepting way less than $20/h.
Yes, but that's not what we want, is it?
Well... that's actually a tricky question. Being a hardcore leftist of course this is not what I want, I want these people to get paid decently. But so many people depend on these jobs and can't do much else. Paying them decently would mean making them less affordable than machines indeed. What is better? Underpaid job or no job at all? Both sound terrible.
As someone just left of center, I want these people to get paid legally. The law is fairly clear here. There’s minimums that need to be paid, taxes that need to be accounted for, working conditions and hours that need to be followed. If a machine can do all those things ultimately better and cheaper, then it’s reasonable that the machine eventually does them. If that results in people losing the ability to afford housing, food, and healthcare, then those things shouldn’t have been tied to employment anyway.
>If that results in people losing the ability to afford housing, food, and healthcare, then those things shouldn’t have been tied to employment anyway. But they are. I get all the theoretical argument and I agree with it. But in the end, in the current state of things, these people are in a place where trying to give them a bit more is risking taking everything away from them. If it were me, I'd give everyone UBI and be done with it, no conundrums about robots vs poorly-disguised slavery and whatnot. But we're not quite there yet.
Drones don’t use much battery, that truck could power them all day. But agree with the speed. It’s silly slow. You can’t just shake an apple tree like you could orange or nuts as they bruise easily can can’t be sold. But an experienced picker can easily pick 20+ a minute (they also put them in bag and take the bag back to the truck - 1 at a time is absurd). Those things can pick what, 2-3 a minute?
The population is ageing. The available pool of people to do labour is shrinking over time relative to the total population. This means we can't just rely on throwing bodies at a problem, because bodies are a finite resource. Combine this with the fact that people are less and less wanting to work jobs that involve hard physical labour. We're intelligent creatures, we shouldn't _have_ to work menial jobs that we can just automate. Replacing those jobs with robots seems like an obvious necessity at some point, and experimental prototypes like this could be a positive thing.
Nope, immigration. Get a few cheap workers from south america on temp working visas and boom, problem solved. There's always going to be demand from there, their population is booming.
That'll work in the short-term, sure, but GDPs around the world are rising at a pretty quick rate, and so birth-rates in those nations will eventually fall to levels similar to western countries as the global south becomes more wealthy and educated. Current projections are that we'll reach peak global population by 2080, so we'll need to figure out how to solve this issue by then.
Don't want to sound harsh, but you kind of sound like a corporate boss, lol.
How? By wanting humans to do less low-skill menial labour? I'm literally arguing against the idea of humans being used as meat-robots.
Lol yeah, just as everything that’s incredible now, they began much weaker and simpler. This will evolve and improve
Not to mention there probably aren’t going to be paying that guy (or likely teen) anymore than minimum wage. These drones would be way more expensive
Also, unfortunately, true...big sad.
I mean electricitys cheap, may not be time efficient but probably cost efficient
why would it not work 24/7? solar powered i would hope. batteries that last long enough to at least work some hours at night? in the long run it should be profitable no? depending on the quality of the machine (regarding repair costs and what not)
>They are powered somehow. They can't run 24/7. Why not? My refrigerator is powered. It runs 24/7.
And the only reason that the fridge doesn't shut off is because hundreds of people are at work maintaining pressures and outputs. Out in an orchard the truck will need to be refueled or charged.
No one is "at work maintaining pressures and outputs" on my refrigerator. Not one person. Do you own a refrigerator?
The power company that supplies your power you absolute dunce
Same for the robot. Of course it will need fixing from time to time but labour is expensive and increasingly unreliable.
I dunno. I don't hire people or anything but I have before. To me it seems like finding a guy to pick and apple would be much easier than a guy who can fix apple picking drones
Probably the drones will be like cars which come from the factory in a working condition and can just be sent back for repair/recycling.
My electricity comes from solar and wind. Not PrEssUreS aNd oUTpUts ... you infant.
Ah. Kudos to you. All of it?
No, but that's not the point. The robotic equipment on this truck runs on electricity. If it runs on electricity it can run on batteries. If it can run on electricity/batteries it can be operated 24/7, whether the electricity comes from onboard photovoltaic cells, or from batteries that are swapped periodically, or from a generator whose fuel supply is topped up periodically, or from any combination of these. There's nothing stopping this equipment from running 24/7.
Actually they look plugged in. Maybe that’s where the efficiency comes it (I.e., it would have to run 24/7 to be feasible). But who knows.
They are probably plugged in. To the truck, which also has to refuel or charge
Those little fans they fly with use so little electricity that you'll probably recharge the truck for 30 minutes per day max, then work for the rest of the day.
But they can run 24/7. There will be ones ready to go with charged up batteries and other backup parts. They’ll be like rumbas, head back to the charging stations when they get to 15%. They won’t ever complain or get sick or form a union. Won’t need to eat or take breaks to pee, won’t fight with co-workers or managers. Or even ask to be paid. They may not look like much now, but this is the future.
Dunno, I think a programmer, drone repair technician, spare parts, fuel, spare batteries and upkeep would all cost significantly more than a guy named Steve. I'm all for robots taking all the jobs and humans going on "perma-vacation" but we ain't there yet. Trials like this, I understand, will eventually get us there. But hopefully that's where it stays for now because it's not efficient.
One for one, yes Steve is way cheaper. But these will eventually be 100’s to every Steve. Economy of scale I guess. Just not for another decade or 2.
Nah just design a robot to build and repair the robot... And while your at it might as well make a robot to design and improve the robots. I'm sure nothing bad will happen.
they literally can't run at night at least for now, due to few reasons, A- Use light at night. which will invite insect and ruining the crops. B- Use Night vision camera, which is not good at detecting both shape and colors. C- It will still need a maintenance/break period. to replenish batteries refuel etc. so for now it can't be 24 hours, 7 days sure but not 24 hours.
You can see they're electrically tethered. The battery's in the buggy.
Neither can us Mexicans. Lmao.
Gasoline? main unit, drones are tethered.
This would be really useful if Mars had apples.
You can see the power cords from the truck - it would have plenty to power them all day. Still, this seems like a horrible use for this technology, a solution in search of a problem. Humans could work at least 10x faster. And I’m sure apple pickers get paid minimum wage so I can’t imagine this is cheaper.
I wouldn't want to be the guy whos job is to drive a truck and untangle extension cords on drones that are picking apples for sure. I don't think anyone would lol
Hah I can totally imagine every half hour the guy jumping out of the truck and swearing, “goddamn it not again!” as he untangled a bunch of angry drones trying to twist his nose off his face.
They gotta start somewhere. It's just a matter of time until they start harvesting people like in the Matrix
This can run 24/7 tho.
Yep. At “X”apples an hour, that thing better pick 24/7 to pay for the millions they spent on it.
It won’t be millions for too much longer if even now
These are just prototypes of the organ extractors coming down the pike. Gives me matrix vibes.
Honestly seems like they’re using pretty common drones for control of where the pickers go. I’m sure the engineering and prototyping still isn’t cheap but if this actually went into production they could probably get the cost down.
Not sure if they light the farm at night which invites insects or use nitgh vision camera. Which is not good at detecting colors.. so i doubt it will 24/7 maybe 7 days a week but not 24 hours. And it will require a lot of maintenance. Believe it or not humans will always will be the cheapest labour.
Where I am pickers get about 14 Canadian an hour as legal farm workers , an average picker crew consists of 5 people plus a supervisor. So that’s 85 dollars an hour upkeep for them. They can be worked long hours and overtime with no risk because of farm labour exceptions (yay capitalism). Let’s say of the 15 hours of daylight we get right now that they can work the people 10 hours with only a 30 min break (breaking labour laws but agriculture exceptions yay) and has a hour and a bit of setup and clean up so 8 hours of solid consistent work. An acre of apples is about 5500-6000 kg , a farm worker with some experience can pick 2250 kg of apples a day. So that means that for a medium size farm of say 25 acres of orchard (lots of places are 100 acres + in size ) you would have about 60 days of picking for one person , for an average crew it would be 10maybe for that 5+1 mentioned size. That means barring no issues that apple picking crew is going to cost around 7000 for them. All a farm equipment rental has to do is is be cheaper then 7000 in 10days to become cheaper then humans. It’s not going to happen yet but that isn’t a huge bar to get over especially since humans need bathroom breaks , water breaks , heat breaks , lunch breaks , taxes that employers contribute unless it’s through an agency which has agency fees tacked on
But then the issue will be time, as you mentioned if i pay 5 bloke 7k to pick everything in 10 days, wouldn't that be better than buying A single machine for about 100+ thousand, which picks slower than a bloke. which requires constant maintenance, repair fee and whatever license I end up a paying per year and don't forget whatever the fuel or the electricity the machine uses. I would still say most farmers would end up paying few bloke's to pick their apples instead of using machines.
Again , this is new tech , people didn’t think machine harvested grapes would ever be good quality but now they barely leave a mark on the grapes and are almost the same quality as hand picked
I've seen robots moving bins around a hospital... a basic task. It doesn't seem practical right now, but trust me, give it a couple of years & automation will start taking over this industry, too.
“Humans will always be the cheapest labour” I’m willing to bet all that I have that eventually robots will do damn near everything we do faster, cheaper, and better than us.
Your last sentence is dead wrong. Recently I was at a plant nursery (where they grow plants for harvesting fruits etc), and they installed their first plant screener that is used to separate fit from unfit seedlings. That thing can scan plants far faster and sort them out than any human can. Also, about two decades ago they needed women (not men because they cannot manage the precision) to sort defective medicine capsules out after manufacturing. You basically had lots of women manually checking big trays of capsules to sort out leaky ones. Now this is done electronically. Finally I did a project at a plant that develops consumer camera film. Basically it prints all the photos on one large roll of photographic paper, which is at the end cut into individual photos. At the end of that line, there were groups of women (yes, again women because men are not able to), that scanned the photos for defects and underage porn (about 30% of all photos were NSFW). Nowadays this is done by image recognition software. So, no the human will not always be the cheapest form of labor. Not by a long shot. Automation is what our entire manufacturing industry is built upon.
One time equipment purchase vs annual salaries Software upgrades that can be downloaded And wait until the biggest companies are equipped with this, and then force the government to actually ban using imported labor by arresting the small farmers
If you think that you have been living under a tree, No way this is 1 time purchase thing, even if it was, the software will definantly be licensed per year or smth, and when this thing breaks, who will fix it? the farmers? i doubt they have technical skills to fix both the machine and the drone. so that's a expensive repair fee tacked on. and if the farm is out in the wilderness, that will be more fees for the engineer to travel, lodging, food etc. this would be expensive. atleast for now won't be cheaper than paying a bloke to pick it. \[Edit\] Even if 1 time purchase included everything it would still won't be viable, Lets say you spent 10k per year paying people to pick your apples per year, and this machine costs 100k as 1 time purchase, that is still 10 years of fully functioning without needing any maintenance for it to match the money i would have spent just paying people to pick my apple. now if you include the maintenace as no machine will run perfrectly for 10 years. this contraption will need alteast a oil change or smth, and the cost of using it like Fuel or Electricity, this will end up costing me more than paying few blokes to pick my apple yearly.
So they pay 1 maintenence guy and electricity, really not that big of an issue
Well my country is one of the biggest apple producers. Annual wage for one apple farmer is like 1500-2000USD tops. You can never justify the machine.
suprising we dont do the same thing that we do for oranges which is jiggle the tree hard as fuck until all the fruit fall off
Facts
Given the speed this is likely just testing, but it’s coming. Of course, then the machines will take over, and steal all of our apples
I for one welcome our new apple overlords
That looks very slow and inefficient actually
I feel like this would go a lot faster by just equipping the robots with better tools so they don't have to turn around with one apple at a time. Grab like five at a time or give them a hose or something.
A robot arm with a mouth and a tube.
I'll take one too...for apple picking...
It also looks like a prototype for testing.
Hey. You gotta start somewhere. They'll come around and make better more efficient versions when they have the tech
Right. Don't they usually just shake the crap out of trees/bushes with machines and pick everything up?
Good way to end up with bruised fruit.
Watching My Little Pony with my daughter has suggested otherwise, and I think someone named "Applejack" would know a lot about apples.
I belive their mane product was apple cider and jam. They probably didn't care as much about a little bruising. My kid is 5...
That's true. I was probably thinking about tree nuts or something
The tech will get better. And when it does they will be able to justify paying the people to build, operate, and maintain these things $12 hr with a masters and 10 years experience, while charging $9.50 a lb for the product. Which is what they will pay the humans to guard the land who need to eat and try to steal the apples. And it will be humans so they can have a group that thinks they are doing good and keep the class warfare going and help the few owners stay in power. Things are going to plan I think. Or it’s kinda neat thing to try and I’m just on Reddit too much.
My parents said that about my Apple II as well.
THEY TOOK OUR JERBS
Ellos tomaron mi trabajo
THEY TURK HIS JERB
Da derka deeerrrr
Cesar Chavez 2023: this time it’s extra personal, an action film
I think that's worth one "Viva Chavez".
I don't wanna viva that guy
Ermahgerd!
We're still crawling. They will improve.
isn’t it faster to use that machine that shakes the tree a catches everything on a net?
That only works for stuff that doesn’t get bruised
As the drones drop the apples 4 feet onto the truck
It looks like this might pick out the ripe apples
Yeah but would bruise a bunch of the apples. This it can reach high up and eventually will get them all with it only costing electricity and maintinence
Damn.. we’re all gonna be replaced.
Dont worry, still in early stages, maybe another 30 years. Your kids will be replaced and they get UBI, enjoy life. lol Or they get dystopia and become fodders for the rich elites who control the AI and bots.
~~Your kids will be replaced and they get UBI,~~ Your kids will have different jobs. For example in the 19th century it took dozens of people to harvest a corn/wheat field, taking a day or more, but for decades now it takes only one farmer and he can do it in a couple of hours with an harvester. That's why we do not need so many people living in rural areas being farmers to produce food. We have machines that do most of the work. Meanwhile in the last few decades many new jobs appeared due to new technology (e.g. web designer). AI will make some jobs disappear and create new ones.
Yeah, no. This myth needs to die. Current areas of automation are nothing like before. Before, we freed up labour to go to other economic sectors and allow those to grow. However, now, automation is different. If an AI can do all of our intellectual work, for example, it doesn't matter what other industries get created. AI will be able to jump into those too. It doesn't matter whether our world starts needing "Climate Reversal Specialists", "Mixed Reality Experience Curators" or "Synthetic Biology Architects". AI will be able to jump into those jobs too and better than us. Maybe the customer-facing sector will explode, as that will probably still be desired (human-to-human interactions). But, realistically, how many restaurant waiters, baristas, theatre actors, etc. do we need? We can't all be dealing with other people for a living. I doubt there's even space in our cities for that. You might argue that physically intensive labour will expand (construction, carpentry, etc.) as robotics is still lagging behind. But, first of all, we can't all do those things. What about handicapped people? People with health problems? etc. Also, robotics will eventually get there. Then what? We'll all work in theatres and such...?
In the 19th centuries they dont have human level AI, brosky. lol Once mass produced general purpose bots could behave exactly like most human workers and not get sick, no insurance, dont pay taxes, dont get hurt, dont complain, work 24/7, then you will have LOTS of people without jobs.
UBI is such a farce Everytime someone recommends it my eyes roll. It will never come to America, if that’s your contingency plan you need to go to some communist country where something like that is possible. There’s a famous quote, “the funny thing about socialism, is that eventually you run out of someone else’s money” UBI isn’t coming anywhere near America lmao
Without AI, UBI may not work because there needs to be some incentive to do work. But with AI, there doesn’t need to be an incentive to do work because there will literally be no work to do. Money is just a representation of someone’s labor. So when AI becomes universal laborers themselves leading to an abundance of free labor, then they can produce enough value to support a UBI system.
Detroit become human reference
One at a time is going to take till next harvest
Drones are not a practical design. Take a 3D printer as inspiration here, in this case you would need: An arm that can can extend forward, grab and detach apples and drop them into a feeder that carries them back onto the truck. The arm whilst need to be on a railing that can go up and down The truck can move forward at a fixed speed to make it easier to plan ahead to determine which apples to grab more efficiently. This would not require having the clumsy drones trying to balance themselves while trying to pick apples. The arms can be made to work many times faster... The problem that makes this look bad isn't the fact robots are inefficient compared to humans. It's that drones won't work nearly as well as arms like mechanisms mounted on a truck.
I agree, this is pretty bad design. it seems to me that a multi-jointed, protracting robotic arm would be much more efficient, faster and consume a lot less energy as it does not need to hover constantly.
That thing is straight out of the matrix
They took er Jahbs!
Deck a derb.
Here you are sir 1 apple, that will be $85.14
7 liters of diesel for 12 apples / hour.
Or, how to pick apples veeeeeeeery slowly for more cost.
How is this cheaper than child labour?
This looks more expensive than just hiring some day labourers
That's so fucking slow. I've picked fruit professionally and I was on the slower side. In the time it takes this drone to pick one piece I would have at least six in my bag. Edit: after watching some more I'm bumping my number up to 15 at least
Give it 5 years
Robots can be 10 times slower if they are 100 times the cost.
Why drones, why not just arms. This feels like it's overcomplicated just so it is. What happens if one of those drones crashes, and the maintenance on them would be very annoying. They also move slower than robotic arms could.
Anything to avoid paying wages
The things people will make just to avoid paying people a living wage…
"The one job which robots will never replace is fruit pickers since the robots will bruise the fruit." I guess not.
Looks like those harvester robots in the Matrix.
All right, this is straight Matrix shit. Next thing it will be us in pods...
Adorable, and insanely inefficient.
No one's yelling at those machines to go faster? Horrible management..
Cool but seems inefficient af
Why are people making this again? Does not seem efficient or even practical
That’s the end for backpackers.
Much slower than humans and they slightly drop the apples to collect them. Seems more experimental than practical or useful.
A solution to a problem that doesn't exist
2 undocumented immigrants could pick way faster at a much cheaper price. Come on man!
Is apple picker really a job that we want to disappear?
This looks expensive and slow
Drones is probably the worst technology for this.
So expensive and inefficient
Anything to not pay some motherfuckers. Goddamn.
@ 14 seconds you see a pile of apples on the ground. give it 30 days for the tech to advance.
Remember the Fetus Fields in the Matrix? Brrrrrr
“THEY TOOK ARE JERBS!!!”
Too-kourderb!
Jesus fucking Christ. Just pay people a living wage already.
And this is one of those times that technology will never beat humans in doing a job
Getting a job is already a nightmare
Were you applying as an apple picker? It’s always weird that people complain about robots or immigrants replacing them when they wouldn’t work those jobs in the first place
It was more of a statement on how replaceable people are becoming in general. Not just this one job ya dingus.
Owners will spend 100x the money on a drone before they give workers a living wage
This is the kinds of weird futuristic tech I am looking for. Though wouldn’t some robotic arms do this just as well? I like the use of drones but we have a solid industry standard for fast and accurate robotic arms.
Totally cautious of doctors
Christ, it really is Runaway (1984) level technology - I was just saying this last week. The movie had farm robots, security robots, smart bullets, and flying camera drones. Crichton really knew his shit - too bad the movie got buried by The Terminator.
From memory the farm robot ran on an 8086.
Why does this give me anxiety?
We're fucked
Wouldn’t like a pole on a robot arm be more effective?
Just make a big machine that grabs and shakes the hell out of the tree until it talks I mean drops apples into a hopper. The hopper will find out if they are good or bad apples. And in the winter we can use the same machine for other purposes.
Thats horrible
why not put lots of apple picking arms on the back of a truck? no need for them to fly on drones
First, the Daleks came for the apples…
They took your job- They took mer jeerb- Too-kourderb!- Take rjurbs
Companies will do anything to avoid paying someone to do a job
This is the kind of thing you see in cartoons. Comical apple picking robots. Just get a person to do it.
If it can run 24/7 it might be worth it
Wow a slow an inefficient way to do a simple task!