Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
We’ve often discussed the role of automation as a retardant to traditional job growth, but there are some really “scary” things happening out there nowadays and one can only imagine how much better these robots will be a decade from now. With much of our job growth recently in low wage industries that are labor intensive (think restaurants, bars, etc) anything that hurts that has a lot of societal implications in the long run. Already many in the bottom 60% have made no progress from where they were (inflation adjusted) since the late 70s. Here is one specific story on lettuce pickers. Yes this is not a job most Americans do as it has been ‘farmed out’ (pun intended) but multiply this type of story over multiple industries and millions of jobs in the future and the scale of it is what is scary. Not sure what all these people displaced out of this work are going to do.
Via AP:
- On a windy morning in California’s Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds. The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a machine that can “thin” a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.
- The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization — fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they’re sensitive to bruising.
- Researchers are now designing robots for these most delicate crops by integrating advanced sensors, powerful computing, electronics, computer vision, robotic hardware and algorithms, as well as networking and high precision GPS localization technologies. Most ag robots won’t be commercially available for at least a few years.
- Farmers say farm robots could provide relief from recent labor shortages, lessen the unknowns of immigration reform, even reduce costs, increase quality and yield a more consistent product.
- Many sectors in U.S. agriculture have relied on machines for decades and even the harvesting of fruits and vegetables meant for processing has slowly been mechanized. But nationwide, the vast majority of fresh-market fruit is still harvested by hand. Research into fresh produce mechanization was dormant for years because of an over-abundance of workers and pressures from farmworker labor unions.
- In recent years, as the labor supply has tightened and competition from abroad has increased, growers have sought out machines to reduce labor costs and supplement the nation’s unstable agricultural workforce. The federal government, venture capital companies and commodity boards have stepped up with funding.
- On the Salinas Valley farm, entrepreneurs with Mountain View-based startup Blue River Technology are trying to show that the Lettuce Bot can not only replace two dozen workers, but also improve production. After a lettuce field is planted, growers typically hire a crew of farmworkers who use hoes to remove excess plants to give space for others to grow into full lettuce heads. The Lettuce Bot uses video cameras and visual-recognition software to identify which lettuce plants to eliminate with a squirt of concentrated fertilizer that kills the unwanted buds while enriching the soil.
- Blue River, which has raised more than $3 million in venture capital, also plans to develop machines to automate weeding — and eventually harvesting — using many of the same technologies.
- Another company, San Diego-based Vision Robotics, is developing a similar lettuce thinner as well as a pruner for wine grapes. The pruner uses robotic arms and cameras to photograph and create a computerized model of the vines, figure out the canes’ orientation and the location of buds — all to decide which canes to cut down.
- Fresh fruit harvesting remains the biggest challenge. Machines have proved not only clumsy, but inadequate in selecting ripe produce. In addition to blunders in deciphering color and feel, machines have a hard time distinguishing produce from leaves and branches. And most importantly, matching the dexterity and speed of farmworkers has proved elusive.
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