Hey AI people, what's up with pest control and fruitpicking? I feel like every year there are cool new robots that seem like they should vastly improve productivity, but it just doesn't seem to take off. Too expensive? Labor too cheap? Doesn't scale? Resistance by farmers?
@ZachWeinersmith Not an AI person but a farmer (albeit not crop). The central problem IIRC is the usual — judgement calls. How do you tell if fruit is ripe? Combination of visual inspection, touch, and experience: all things that are hard to replicate via AI.
I know how’s it’s usually portrayed in media — and, heck, by some landowners — but good fruit pickers are 100% skilled labor.
Also plants don’t really grow to spec, you have a lot of natural variation, and that’s also hard to program for.
@katfeete @ZachWeinersmith I am a software engineer and I agree that you've got the correct answer. Some crops are more amenable to automation, but fruit tends to have highly variable growth, doesn't necessarily ripen evenly across a crop, can be difficult to tell when it is ripe through objective measures, and most importantly, is often delicate (bruises easily).
All of those factors make automation difficult. AI could help on some (checking ripeness), but it doesn't solve others (delicateness).
@LouisIngenthron @katfeete @ZachWeinersmith I want to add on something that I don't think has been addressed. I know with some perhaps even most fruits, knowing when to cut off one so the others get more nutrients is also a judgment call that's difficult to determine.