The strawberry you’re eating might have been picked by a programmed machine
I remember reading a piece about farmers using drones, and I must say I was impressed.
For farmers, the transition from manned aircraft to drones is an easy choice to make. Not only are they much cheaper, but they also provide imaging tools, which can be used for detecting a variety of crop-related issues, ranging from problems with irrigation to measuring chlorophyll levels in plants.
So today I want to talk about the next step in agri-tech evolution: robots. Although most modern farmers don’t have to spend their days in the field anymore, sweating and toiling under the sun while harvesting crops or tending to cattle, they still spend a considerable amount of time servicing machines that harvest and spray for them. If this part of the production were automated, farmers would have more time (and money) to invest in expanding and perfecting their production capacities. They’d also boost yields in the process.
If you think using robots in agriculture is too futuristic, think again: They are already assisting with a growing number of back-breaking activities in fields all over the world. For instance, meet SW 6010, the strawberry harvester, made by Spanish company Agrobot:...
...The way it works is pretty cool. The robot lowers dozens of rows of camera-equipped appendages into the strawberry bed, which shoot around 20 photos per second, scanning fruits. Once a ripe strawberry has been found, the robot picks it. The strawberry is then placed onto a conveyor belt and taken up to be placed in a container. The entire process takes just four seconds.
Not everything is fully automated, though. The only part left for humans, due to the delicate structure of the fruit, is to pack them into containers by hand.Anyway, can you guess what this one does?......MORE
HT: Ritholtz's Reads
Your Climateer early warning system was on top of the trend in 2012:
It's All Coming Together: The $210,000 Cow Miking Robot (can the dream of plowborgs be far behind?)
We got us our own little singularity, right here at Climateer Investing.Having looked at the melding of terrestrial agriculture and robots on the most basic levels, GPS guided harvesters and Monsanto's genetically engineered 'Frankenfarmers':
Robotics, agriculture and energy.
Boise, ID GM plowborg Jed Kleebert.
We moved on to the aquatic world with "Sea Robots Farm Algae for Fuel", combining robotics and energy carriers:
"Yup, I used to raise corn for ethanol. But then the topsoil blew away and I couldn't even get enough juice to run my tractor or get drunk on Saturday. Then this stranger came to town. Ordered something called a 'la-tay' and called himself a 'vee-cee.' Said he'd give me $20 million to come to Californee and herd algae. So we packed up our furniture in his little toy car and came west. Now I've got a regular bonanza of the slimy critters and the kids got shoes. Hain't looked over my shoulder back east since."
-from our post "Algaen Gothic"
and now we circle back to the land-based stuff....
(and apologize to the Grant Wood estate)
