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Strawberry Picking Robot In Japan
Japan's people are aging; old farmers are finding it difficult to find young people to work the fields. Bring on the robots!
(Robot strawberry picker from Japan)
This handy robot performs a particularly time-consuming and tedious (read "labor-intensive") chore; the monitoring and picking of strawberries.
In Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, venture firm Romobility Youto is working on its strawberry-picking robot; the robot's color-sensitive camera checks on ripeness before plucking.
The following video shows you how it works.
(Video of strawberry-picking robot)
Science fiction writers (and by extension, their readers) are ahead of the curve once again. In his 1955 short story War Veteran, Philip K. Dick refers to robot gardeners:
David Unger sat moodily on his park bench...To his right a robot gardener worked over the same patch of grass again and again, its metallic eye-lenses intently fastened on the wizened, hunched-over figure of the old man.
(Read more about Philip K. Dick's robot gardener)
Readers might also recall the field-minder from Brian Aldiss' Who can replace a man? (1963) and the robot gardening crab from Neuromancer (1984)
If you're interested, take a look at some of these other robotic aids to agriculture:
- HortiBot - Autonomous Weed 'n Feed AgBot
HortiBot can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds, eliminating it with its attachments. - Robotic Tomato Harvester Ready For Space
The tomato harvester robot is able to locate and pick ripe tomatoes; the robot's "eye" scans the tomato plant and determines the number and position of ripe fruit. - AgBots: Agricultural Robots Take The Field
Agriculture has been slow to adopt to robotic technology; however, some new developments are on the horizon.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/25/2008)
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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