A robot that picks apples? Can Harest up to 10,000 apples an Hour...
A robot that picks apples? Replacing humans worries some
NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS April 28, 2017
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Harvesting Washington state's vast
fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them
work illegally in the United States.
That system eventually could change dramatically as at
least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to
market.
The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours
a day.
"Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad
Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want
to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."
FFRobotics and Abundant Robotics, of Hayward, California,
are racing to get their mechanical pickers to market within the next couple of
years.
Harvest has long been mechanized for large portions of
the agriculture industry, such as wheat, corn, green beans, tomatoes and many
other crops. But for more fragile commodities like apples, berries, table
grapes and lettuce — where the crop's appearance is especially important —
harvest is still done by hand.
Members of the $7.5 billion annual Washington agriculture
industry have long grappled with labor shortages, and depend on workers coming
up from Mexico each year to harvest many crops.
President Donald Trump's hard line against immigrants in
the U.S. illegally has many farmers in the country looking for alternative
harvest methods. Some have purchased new equipment to try to reduce the number
of workers they'll need, while others have lobbied politicians to get them to
deal with immigration in a way that minimizes harm to their livelihoods.
"Who knows what this administration will do or not
do?" said Jim McFerson, head of the Washington State Tree Fruit Research
Center in Wenatchee. For farmers, "it's a question of survival."
Washington leads the nation in production of apples and
several other crops. Harvest starts in the spring with asparagus and runs until
all the apples are off the trees in late fall.
The work is hard and dangerous, and has long drawn
Mexican workers to central Washington, where several counties near the Canadian
border are now majority-Hispanic. Experienced pickers, who are paid by the bin,
can make more than $200 a day.
Advocates for farmworkers say robot pickers will have a
negative effect.
The eventual loss of jobs for humans will be huge, said
Erik Nicholson of Seattle, an official with the United Farm Workers union. He
estimated half of the state's farmworkers are immigrants who are in the country
illegally.
But many of them have settled in Washington and are
productive members of the community, he said.
"They are scared of losing their jobs to
mechanization," Nicholson said. "A robot is not going to rent a
house, buy clothing for their kids, buy food in a grocery and reinvest that
money in the local economy."
While financial details are not available, the builders
say the robotic pickers should pay for themselves in two years. That puts the
likely cost of the machines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
FFRobotics is developing a machine that has
three-fingered grips to grab fruit and twist or clip it from a branch. The
machine would have between four and 12 robotic arms, and can pick up to 10,000
apples an hour, Kober said.
One machine would be able to harvest a variety of crops,
taking 85 to 90 percent of the crop off the trees, Kober said. Humans could
pick the rest.
Abundant Robotics is working on a picker that uses
suction to vacuum apples off trees.
Plans for the robotic harvesters — including a goal of
getting them to market before 2019 — were discussed in February at an
international convention of fruit growers in Wenatchee.
The two robot makers are likely to hit their production
goals, said Karen Lewis, a Washington State University cooperative extension
agent who has studied the issue.
"Both of them will be in the field with prototypes
this fall," Lewis said, calling the robotic harvesters a "game
changer."
But for the machines to work, apples and other crops must
be grown in new trellis systems that allow robots to see and harvest the fruit,
she said.
"We are evolving the tree architecture and apple
placement to be compatible with robotics," Lewis said, a process called
"robot-ready."
Large farming operations likely will be first to adopt
the machines, but it might be decades before their use is widespread.
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