Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

newatlas.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#51

Post by simonebrunozzi »

dxbydt wrote: post #21

I grew up in a remote village in south India. We had over two dozen coconut trees in our yard. I made a long loop in the mud that went around all these trees. I'd pull water out of the well using a rope & pulley & pour it down the loop. The water would wind its way until it reached all the two dozen trees. About an hour of this water pulling & the loop would stay wet for a few hours. This sort of manual work was stan…

Thanks a lot for sharing these details. I think they add a lot of context to this particular activity.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#52

Post by jelliclesfarm »

rootsudo wrote: post #30

I enjoy the conversation here. So many people are assuming there is true thought in OPEX, CAPEX, and employer rights and employer safety in these operations. As others mentioned, Thailand used Monkeys. There is so much of a disconnect between this crowd and the farmers and the people this robot will actually replace. What is the average annual income of a farm hand in Thailand, Philippines, or any country that has co…

Good. I hope they lose these kinds of jobs to robots. Human beings shouldn’t be doing this kind of dirty and dangerous jobs.

Once upon a time they used slaves from Africa to pick cotton in the newly formed United States. I often wish I was around to see the mechanical cotton harvester for the first time ever. I KNOW it would have taken my breath away.

Consider this..there are 8 billion people in the world. Growing and doing manual labour for food, fodder, fuel and fiber is unimaginable and should be unimaginable...and we should strive to make all those jobs obsolete.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#53

Post by dzhiurgis »

imgabe wrote: post #28
dzhiurgis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crane would be way more complex and something like 50x more expensive.

Why not just get a cherry picker truck? Those already exist, can be purchased used and drive around from one tree to the next.

My hunch the roads aren't super suitable for modern machinery either.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#54

Post by Const-me »

deathhand wrote: post #4

Sadly this illustrates the current state of Robotics - HARD. This was 3 years with multiple people's lives. The industry as a whole needs to go down the same route as computers did which are common platforms that fit together that get the job done. Sadly there needs to be a behemoth in this space first(1960s IBM) that does all this work that society as a whole then can profit from(Facebook today)

These multiple people were professor and their students. The main value for that particular project wasn’t coconuts nor product development, it was education. In that light the project is awesome, pretty sure the students learned tons of valuable things about hardware design debugging and testing, embedded software, coconut farming, and many others.

From product development point of view, I think a team of 3-5 smart and experienced people is likely to deliver better result in a couple of months, given reasonable amount of funding to purchase commercially available components.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#56

Post by dehrmann »

culturestate wrote: post #50
dehrmann wrote: post #39

I don't know that much about coconuts, but I grew up in an agricultural region of the US. Practically everything than can be easily mechanized has been, or people are working on it. Coconuts are large and hard, so they're much easier to mechanically harvest than something like berries. The big difference is coconuts aren't produced in rich countries where labor is expensive.

> Coconuts are...much easier to mechanically harvest than something like berries. The big difference is coconuts aren't produced in rich countries where labor is expensive. To harvest berries or olives or apples, something in the vicinity of "put a tarp down and shake the tree really hard" is usually a fairly reliable method. Coconuts don't quite work that way, as anyone who grew up in a place with coconut palms and…

I think only olives are harvested like that. Table (i.e. non-juice) apples are too fragile to knock to the ground. For berries, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt73GOk4JRY. Strawberries are different because they're practically on the ground.

Not to discount your point. Coconuts don't work like any of these.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#57

Post by jb775 »

aaron695 wrote: post #46

I'd be going drones if doing anything techy as a solution to pick coconuts. I feel like specialist equipment is going to cost to much IRL. Drones will continue to advance and have more people who can work with them. Not saying drones would be cost effective either, but I think at least you can pivot. Also see Sreamers - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/

Drones aren't currently feasible. They don't have good battery life, they can't carry much weight (for a saw or w/e to chop the coconuts off), and precision cutting would be very difficult without propellors eventually clipping something.....then you have an electric saw dropping 30-50ft out of the air which is terrifying.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#58

Post by daggerdrone »

dxbydt wrote: post #21

I grew up in a remote village in south India. We had over two dozen coconut trees in our yard. I made a long loop in the mud that went around all these trees. I'd pull water out of the well using a rope & pulley & pour it down the loop. The water would wind its way until it reached all the two dozen trees. About an hour of this water pulling & the loop would stay wet for a few hours. This sort of manual work was stan…

Just out of curiosity, if there was shortage of coconut harvesters, why were they poor? Can't they demand more money for the task?

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#59

Post by culturestate »

dehrmann wrote: post #56
culturestate wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coconuts are...much easier to mechanically harvest than something like berries. The big difference is coconuts aren't produced in rich countries where labor is expensive. To harvest berries or olives or apples, something in the vicinity of "put a tarp down and shake the tree really hard" is usually a fairly reliable method. Coconuts don't quite work that way, as anyone who grew up in a place with coconut palms and…

I think only olives are harvested like that. Table (i.e. non-juice) apples are too fragile to knock to the ground. For berries, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt73GOk4JRY . Strawberries are different because they're practically on the ground. Not to discount your point. Coconuts don't work like any of these.

Yeah, I took a bit of literary license there. My point was that for most crops, the hardest part of mechanical harvesting isn't[1] actually getting the thing off the tree or the bush or the stalk, it's what happens after that. A combine doesn't do its magic at the head, right?

Coconuts are the opposite, and I think it's a more difficult problem than it appears to be.

1. Full disclosure, I'm not a farmer or an engineer, just a guy who has spent some time studying agricultural automation.

Re: Indian robot climbs trees to harvest coconuts

#60

Post by iratewizard »

ponker wrote: post #42
thaumasiotes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There recently was a huge controversy in Thailand about using monkey labor for coconut harvesting Well, I read the article. Why exactly is this supposed to be a problem? By all accounts, it's a good idea that works well.

Many people have more empathy for animals than for humans. The idea of a monkey forced/encouraged to climb a tree for a coconut tugs at their heartstrings the way a person does not.

Done right, it's the opposite for me. Those monkeys can live a happy life in the same way as an ox that pulls a tiller.
Post reply on HN