As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
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Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#2I've mentioned those machines before. They're still prototypes, nowhere near rugged enough for field use.
Agrobot: [1] Too many parts, too many places that can catch dirt, too slow. If they can solve the sensor problem, they need to do a complete mechanical redesign to make it field-ready.
Abundant Robotics: [2] Too slow, too fragile. For comparison, here's a Festo vision-guided robot picking up randomly oriented objects. Agricultural robotics needs that kind of speed.
This is going to be solved soon, but probably not by those startups.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKT351pQHfI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS0coCmXiYU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH_t_1-tl40
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#3I've mentioned those machines before. They're still prototypes, nowhere near rugged enough for field use. Agrobot: [1] Too many parts, too many places that can catch dirt, too slow. If they can solve the sensor problem, they need to do a complete mechanical redesign to make it field-ready. Abundant Robotics: [2] Too slow, too fragile. For comparison, here's a Festo vision-guided robot picking up randomly oriented obj…
While I agree with your conclusion in the small, Who else is working on it to take up the slack?
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#4It seems like picking a lot of fruits are easily in the realm of what computer vision is capable of these days.
What would be the first steps to doing a start up in this space? Anyone interested?
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#5This would be a good time to implement regulations and taxes on all robots to diminish all margins gained from automation.
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#6This would be a good time to implement regulations and taxes on all robots to diminish all margins gained from automation.
It is definitely worth considering but there is the other side. Do you want prices to continue to rise as labor costs and healthcare grow? Or would you prefer these prices actually drop even as your income grows? I'm not saying either is right or wrong. Maybe this is solved with UBI or some other approach. If the taxes are super high, the incentive to automate is diminished.
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#7This would be a good time to implement regulations and taxes on all robots to diminish all margins gained from automation.
Would this tax be on all labor-saving devices, like kitchen appliances? Washing machines? Oxen-powered plows?
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#8It seems like picking a lot of fruits are easily in the realm of what computer vision is capable of these days. What would be the first steps to doing a start up in this space? Anyone interested?
there are startups. The issue is rarely technological capability as much as it is adoption, reliability, and durability. Not impossible just hard. There is a lot of work in the space being done by John Deere and others...a LOT of farm analytics, but most of their parts are still cast iron for a reason.
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#9Or they could, you know, offer higher wages.
Re: As California’s labor shortage grows, farmers replace workers with robots
#10They could also, which is notably mentioned no where in the article, pay more?
In a market driven economy...which companies want...employees have market power as well when their is a shortage.