
Can a robot pick a strawberry better, faster, and cheaper than a human? - jamessun
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/02/17/feature/inside-the-race-to-replace-farmworkers-with-robots/
======
le-mark
When I was growing up our family had a fairly sizeable strawberry patch. My
Dad enjoyed gardening, and for a few years my parents canned the produce we
produced. Strawberry preserves were a treat I didn't realize until I was an
adult.

The strawberry patched served dual purpose. Kids too rowdy? Go weed the
strawberries. Strawberry picking can be a little tricky. Strawberries like to
grow all over the plant, both in plain sight on the periphery, and nestled in
among the leaves by the stems. Strawberry plants grow "runners" and spread out
of their own accord making walking among them a challenge of not stepping on
nascent runners.

Strawberries aren't always right for eating though. Sometimes a turtle would
take a bite, sometimes it would be to moist and rot on the stem. Sometimes
they'd become a projectile to stain a siblings face or clothes.

Today my father is 81 and still tending his strawberries. He gets excercise
and keeps busy, and we bring them home to eat during the growing months.
Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot depending on the year.

~~~
asaph
> Strawberry preserves were a treat I didn't realize until I was an adult.

Huh? This doesn't seem to fit with the rest of your story. Despite plentiful
strawberries and a canning operation in your house, you didn't have any
strawberry preserves until adulthood? Did I misunderstand? Please explain.

~~~
michaelmcdonald
I believe he's saying that he had fresh strawberry preserves readily available
as a child; however as an adult that was not the case. He didn't come to
realize how fortunate he was to have the strawberry preserves until adulthood.

------
theptip
One of the interesting (but little-discussed) aspects of the minimum wage
debate is how it interacts with automation.

Historically, the cost of building a robot to do someone's job was in most
cases effectively infinite (i.e. it could not be done no matter how much money
you throw at the problem). Now, it seems like it's potentially in the
$20-50/hour range for many industries, by which I mean not currently cost-
competitive with existing labor, but getting close.

It would be a fairly significant unintended consequence if setting the
national minimum wage to $15 were to actually eliminate entire job categories
like fruit picker and burger flipper, due to pushing the minimum cost of labor
above the cost of automating the role.

It's very interesting to watch developments like those described in the OP,
since they will probably see sigmoid-like adoption; pretty much zero, until
someone gets a model that's cost-competitive, and then I'd imagine quite wide
adoption within a couple years. I don't think a minimum wage is going to solve
the social unrest that this kind of technological change will bring.

~~~
steve_adams_86
I think you're absolutely right. I think the fight for living wages will
likely be T-boned by the juggernaut of automation. That's why (to me) the
conversation about universal basic income is far more constructive and durable
than minimum wages.

I'm also not convinced the minimum wage debates are as helpful since so many
workers don't benefit from it. We certainly need to continue the conversation
and ensure workers are paid fairly, but you're right - the more labour costs,
the less companies will employ them (to some extent). There is a very short-
lived benefit to focusing on raising minimum wages, such that something
longer-lasting needs to be considered immediately as well.

I think the sigmoid-like adoption will be incredibly pronounced and fast in
some industries. I think about this a lot, and when friends justifiably argue
and debate for higher minimum wages, I worry that they'll be totally
blindsided by the reality that minimum wage is useless when you have no job.

~~~
Buttons840
I have an idea that seems (to me) to be somewhere between a higher minimum
wage, and universal basic income:

Require employers to offer very high amounts of paid time off. Perhaps only
applying to low paying jobs.

For example, if a minimum wage employee was guaranteed 6-months worth of paid
time off, they could work two jobs and make twice as much money. And even
though they would technically be working two jobs, they would not have to work
more hours.

People with two jobs are less likely to lose all their income from being laid
off, and would be willing to be more mobile in the market, because they
already have two jobs and can compare them. It would increase competition
between businesses to offer good work environments.

It would also have some of the benefits of universal basic income, because
people would have a lot of time they could spend going to school, or starting
a business, etc.

If minimum wage employees became accustom to a lot of time off that would also
put pressure on other jobs to give more time off. As far as I understand the
US is pretty stingy with time off compared to other developed nations?

It could also address one of the fears about universal basic income, which is
that people would become do-nothing hermits. That couldn't fully happen if
people still had to work some of the time.

It would essentially double the employee cost on business though. But so would
doubling the minimum wage.

~~~
lalaithion
The problem with this scheme is that it is weirdly selective; only people who
can get jobs can benefit. What about the mentally or physically disabled? What
about felons, who often face a significantly smaller job market? What about
people who are outed from a shrinking industry but are too "overqualified" to
be hired at lower levels in other industries?

~~~
filoleg
Perfect is the enemy of good. I think the parent comment uses their
proposition as a good start on the way to eventually achieve universal basic
income for everyone. From their post, the part about alleviating lazy hermit
related worries when it comes universal income hinted at that, imo.

------
spaceflunky
Slightly off topic, but stories like this remind me of the Aeolipile[0] from
Ancient Rome.

It was a simple steam engine invented in 250BC, but the Romans never applied
it to anything because there was no economic impetus. No one in antiquity
seriously questioned slavery, and there was no major industry or constructions
that couldn't be accomplished by throwing bodies at the problem until it was
finished.

In modern times, we done the same thing with a lot of industries, like
agriculture. Fruit harvesting robots are totally feasible, but we have
political and economic policies that make it easier to use migrant labor than
it is to invest in innovation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile)

~~~
tynpeddler
Aeoliphile is an open cycle engine and so inefficient that it's practically
useless for doing work. It took the Europeans a lot of time to develop the
skills necessary to build closed cycle steam engines efficient and powerful
enough to do work.

~~~
chopin
I think that steam engines went hand in hand with the availability of coal.
Even the production of steel (or iron) was hampered by the fact that there
wasn't enough stuff to burn.

Afaik there was much less forestry in Europe until the advent of coal as the
wood was burnt for heating, cooking and iron work.

~~~
pjc50
Yes, this is a serious underappreciated problem. Before we had fossil fuels we
were entirely dependent on inefficient biomass for comfort, survival and
transport.

And the production of coal from all but the shallowest mines requires pumps.
One of the first uses of steam engines was ... pumping out coal mines.

------
gumby
I hope robots lead to smaller, tasty strawberries (i.e. the normal ones).

The strawberries I find in the US are all enormous and have no taste. I have
always assumed it's because these are easier to harvest.

~~~
CloudNetworking
Someone told me once that european strawberries grew wild in forests and those
were the only strawberries europeans knew. Small and very sweet but so fragile
that you can't really pack and sell them.

Eventually some europeans stumbled upon american strawberries: Bigger, less
fragile, less sweet, less tasty. They hybridised the two kinds and got today's
garden strawberries.

Not sure if it's even close to what really happened, but thought I'd share :)
as I found it interesting when I was told about "fregoline di bosco"

~~~
theandrewbailey
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry)

> The garden strawberry was first bred in Brittany, France, in the 1750s via a
> cross of Fragaria virginiana from eastern North America and Fragaria
> chiloensis, which was brought from Chile.

------
LinuxBender
Faster per strawberry or faster per day? If per day, a robot can move slower
and run 24/7\. I could see advantages to this for pest control for some types
of produce as well, as some pests are nocturnal.

This may be a little taboo to speak of, but I should add that the field
workers in my neck of the woods were paid by volume and discouraged from using
the portable restrooms. The people running the strawberry fields saved money
by not having the septic truck come out as often, too. I am not sure how
common this is.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
My parents grew up picking tobacco over the summer and it was apparently the
thing to urinate on the leaves to mess with the girls preparing them for
drying. Something to think about.

------
joshvm
Another year, another strawberry harvesting robot.

I've worked on agri projects that looked into the feasibility of this, though
we never attempted to pick anything. The reason strawberries are always the
fruit of choice is because they're a high value crop. They're also a
relatively easy fruit to identify based on colour, and the way they're grown
makes them relatively easy to segment against the surrounding foliage.

The main issue is cost. Several projects died in the UK (see [http://ict-
agri.eu/node/36238](http://ict-agri.eu/node/36238)) because the end-users i.e.
big growers didn't see there being value for money. So no, cheaper is not
happening. And this is in a country with Brexit looming and a heavy dependence
on season labour; though I don't know if we have a shortage, only that British
people don't want to do it.

[https://www.southeastfarmer.net/section/fruit/robots-
arent-r...](https://www.southeastfarmer.net/section/fruit/robots-arent-ready-
to-replace-human-pickers)

From the article:

> The robot rarely hurts the produce. But as of today, one robotic apple-
> picker costs at least $300,000 — too much for most budgets.

In the UK the money is in high value glasshouse crops like berries and
tomatoes. One issue is you would have to design the entire glasshouse to
optimise for robotics. Ever tried to drive a robot in a glasshouse? The floor
is often bare dirt or covered with polyethene sheeting which gets caught in
whatever wheels you choose. Outdoors is another matter. A lot of harvesting
robots just rip up everything which is.. one way to do it. Bear in mind that
indoor agri is usually fairly automated already, certainly with regard to
climate control. Europe, particularly the Netherlands, has this down -
absolutely enormous installations.

There are lots of strawberry startups. Agrobot
([http://agrobot.com/](http://agrobot.com/)), a Spanish company, looks the
most promising and I think you can actually buy it. Their technique is also
very simple and avoids complications with robotic arms. There's also Dogtooth,
Octinion, and more..

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43816207](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43816207)
(Harvest CROO is also mentioned)

~~~
dmos62
The strawberries in the agrobot intro video [0] are so orange I'd never eat
them, much less buy them. Just from watching the video, I get a sour, dry
taste in my mouth. Who'd possibly produce a video like this, when their
business is strawberries?

But then again, maybe that's the operating requirements of the system, because
they're dropped, not placed in the transport bins. You couldn't drop ripe ones
without damaging them.

[0] [https://youtu.be/SmOkhVu6oUI?t=5](https://youtu.be/SmOkhVu6oUI?t=5)

~~~
CloudNetworking
They are a B2B company. Their clients pick the strawberries like this, so when
they get to the supermarket shelves in the other side of Europe they're red.

If you make a robot that can only pick ripe fruit... well, you're up for a
nasty surprise.

------
carolina_33
Better and faster? Maybe. Cheaper? Definitely.

Approximately $20k per low-skilled immigrant household per year in taxpayer
funded benefits. 57% of immigrant households (legal and illegal) use welfare.
And 25% of our federal prison population are in the country illegally.

So the real price of strawberries would likely go down, considering the high
cost the nation bares for the immediate gratification of cheap fruit.

~~~
Pharmakon
Can you cite those numbers? I checked one and even being generous you inflated
it by quite a bit.

[https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_citiz...](https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_citizenship.jsp)

Thst indicates that if _every single_ non U.S. citizen in federal custody were
there illegally (unlikely) they’d represent 20% and not 25%. Further
clarification from the Cato Institute: [https://www.cato.org/blog/another-
confusing-federal-report-i...](https://www.cato.org/blog/another-confusing-
federal-report-immigrant-incarceration)

 _The evidence that legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be
incarcerated, convicted, or even arrested for crimes is so overwhelming that
even immigration restrictionists like Mark Krikorian at the Center for
Immigration Studies admit that, “A lot of data does suggest immigrants are
less likely to be involved in crime.”_

The Cato Institute being famously _not_ left wing I’d add, founded by the
Koch’s.

~~~
escape_goat
He is probably using reports from the Centre For Immigration Studies. I
believe they can be trusted to use real data, but can't really be trusted to
represent it in proper context. I'm not sure if they cherry-pick cynically or
just out of confirmation bias.

1\. 26% of Federal Prisoners are Aliens
[[https://cis.org/Huennekens/DOJ-26-Federal-Prisoners-Are-
Alie...](https://cis.org/Huennekens/DOJ-26-Federal-Prisoners-Are-Aliens)]

2\. Welfare Use by Immigrant and Native Households
[[https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-
Native...](https://cis.org/Report/Cost-Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-
Households)]

~~~
dfilppi
Confirmation bias works both ways.

~~~
escape_goat
Shrugging and saying "confirmation bias works both ways" is neither factual
nor a valid rebuttal. Confirmation bias is a value-neutral phenomenon. It is
neither innate, unavoidable, nor inherent to sociopolitical analysis. It does
not "work both ways." It works only one way.

There are numerous sources of policy opinion all across the political spectrum
that exhibit confirmation bias. There are also those who attempt to limit
their own bias and do scholarly policy work in good faith.

When a person or publishing entity exhibits a tendency to systematical devalue
evidence that contradicts their assumptions, that is confirmation bias.

------
crazygringo
Given that phones comes with FaceID for cheap 3D scanning, and the level of
object recognition that comes with deep neural networks these days, I'm
curious what major obstacles remain?

Surely pads on robot fingers can ensure soft and distributed enough pressure?
Is it something to do with holding the stem with one robot grip while pulling
the strawberry? Is it pulling apart parts of the plant systematically to find
the strawberries in the first place? Or the fact that the plant isn't rigid
like a tree, but that the location of the strawberries depends on how it's
being held or pulled apart in the first place?

Also curious what the break-even point is, where even if it collects less
strawberries than people do, it still winds up being cheaper.

Kind of bummed the article doesn't go any details at all except for avoiding
the half-eaten ones.

I picked strawberries as a kid (we'd go to the local orchard) and it was so
much fun, but I can't really remember the mechanics of it.

~~~
joshvm
Detecting strawberries is easy, but there are several factors once you've done
that.

You need to determine the location, the orientation to determine the best
cutting angle (and then finding a motion solution for the robot). You need to
determine if the fruit is occluded and if you can actually reach it. A human
will instinctively move foliage out of the way. A robot has to have some way
of doing that without destroying the plant.

Different companies have different approaches. I really like the agrobot
method which cups the strawberry and then pulls it upwards, severing the stem.
Grasping is not viable right now, in my opinion, it's too easy to damage the
crop. There's lots of research going on (force-torque sensors, adaptive/smart
grasping), but it's still in universities.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Robots can have smaller hands, even tentacles, and not have the same problems
with 'things in the way'.

Robots aren't going to pick strawberries like a person would, and its going to
be the innovations that make this an interesting solution.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The issue is that there are actually many implicit constraints on the motion
plans by which robots would pick strawberries, and when you make any one of
them explicit, your whole robots solution might have to be redesigned from the
ground up.

------
sundvor
Ah, as a kid/teenager I picked strawberries a whole summer holiday to earn the
cash for a C64. Back breaking stuff but the reward made it all so worth it!

~~~
giarc
Did the farm you worked at have riders?

[https://vegetablegrowersnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/...](https://vegetablegrowersnews.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/09/600x441-Lying_Down.jpg)

~~~
sundvor
Ah, haha. No such luxuries there.

------
Simulacra
I think this push i to robotic farming is a very good thing. Working on farms
is very dangerous[1] work, and it forces people to contend with these dangers
for not very much pay. Of course that begs the question: Should we push for
the removal of humans from the equation, or force farms to be safer?

[1]. [https://publicintegrity.org/workers-rights/worker-health-
and...](https://publicintegrity.org/workers-rights/worker-health-and-
safety/perils-of-the-new-pesticides/farmworkers-plagued-by-pesticides-red-
tape/)

------
kwhitefoot
Interesting that the picture captioned: "Bob Pitzer, co-founder of Harvest
Croo Robotics, holds a fresh strawberry picked from the fields" shows an
unripe strawberry.

That sort of strawberry is why I don't bother with out of season strawberries
and just buy them here (Norway) when the local ones are in season. Smaller,
sweeter, ripe all the way through, and usually much better flavour than most
of the imported stuff.

------
patorjk
> At the least, social media trains us to stay within the lane of our “brand”.

Even with a very small following, I've noticed this on Instagram. Whenever I
post something outside of my niche, my likes take a dive, even if I think it's
a pretty nice picture. Though the more I think about it, it's only really
training you to stay in your lane if maximum likes and follows are what you're
after.

------
Jedd
> “If we don’t solve this with automation, fresh fruits and veggies won’t be
> affordable or even available to the average person.”

I think this mistakenly assumes that the average person resides in a highly
urbanised environment with no access to soil, and/or no time to tend even a
small garden, and/or the current systems for harvesting all fruit and
vegetables can't work in the future.

------
thangalin
Henry Kissinger once noted: “Control oil and you control nations; control food
and you control the people.”

I've been working on a model for a free food distribution system[1]. From the
article, Harv is on the way to satisfying step 4. We've seen step 6 addressed
with services like FoodDash[2]. The cannabis industry will drive innovation
for step 3. Step 8 is being worked on and companies such as Big Wheel
Burger[3] are helping. Once nuclear fusion is in place[4], the most difficult
part of the model is to accomplish step 5, self-maintenance.

[1]: [https://i.imgur.com/MX68gg7.png](https://i.imgur.com/MX68gg7.png)

[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/3/18166660/gm-cruise-
doordas...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/3/18166660/gm-cruise-doordash-
test-self-driving-food-delivery)

[3]:
[https://bigwheelburger.com/sustainability/](https://bigwheelburger.com/sustainability/)

[4]: [https://www.cfs.energy/](https://www.cfs.energy/)

------
xiphias2
It made sense for a long time that picking robots are coming, whats more
interesting for me is the timing: it seems like they will mature at the same
time as self driving cars

------
samdung
The reason industry wants robots instead of people is because the robots
cannot organise themselves into a union (well, until some AI kicks in in a
future upgrade).

~~~
thecolorblue
I usually think of it as trading a capital (up front) cost for a operational
(ongoing) cost. They want to purchase machinery up front instead of paying
employees/contractors monthly. Usually, this is more efficient as long as they
can get their financing up front as well. If they could pay the people up
front for 5 years of work, at a fixed rate, they would probably do that.

~~~
est31
What if in some year doing harvests makes no sense because of storms or low
prices or too little rain or too little sun or whatever. Such years exist.
They are very bad financially for them but it would be even worse if they
still had to pay for the employees while having no income from sales.

~~~
magduf
>What if in some year doing harvests makes no sense because of storms or low
prices or too little rain or too little sun or whatever. Such years exist.

For strawberries, they shouldn't. You should be growing them inside some kind
of shelter with irrigation.

------
NedIsakoff
Why does it need to be an AND? If it is much cheaper and faster but 5% worse,
why not?

~~~
toast0
If it's worse at harvesting, that likely means less product, but also a lower
grade of product; which means a much lower income for the farm, unless the
difference in time to market makes up for it (early season strawberries are
significantly higher priced than mid season).

------
agumonkey
I wonder if there's a middle ground between fully automated robotics farming
and smart lo-tech tooling for humans.

------
xchip
I know some people down vote TL;DRs but I do want to save people's time.

The answer is the robot didn't perform well during the demo.

------
devmunchies
I bet it can eat it faster too!

------
zeroname
> The future of agricultural work has arrived here in Florida, promising to
> ease labor shortages and reduce the cost of food

There _is no labor shortage_. There's a bunch of growers whining about having
to raise wages to attract workers. Even 25$/hour isn't that great if you
factor in the opportunity cost of seasonal work.

Raising prices and going out of business are valid options for entrepreneurs.
That's how the market allocates resources. Unprofitable work is inefficient.

> He pays his workers between $10 and $14 hourly. They’re mostly local folks.

> “A lot of Americans have become lazy,” Carrigan said. “They want a paycheck.
> They don’t want a job.”

More like a lot of Americans have better things to do than doing _seasonal_
work for 10$ to 14$ an hour. Good for them!

~~~
logfromblammo
Seasonal work at $10-$14/hour is not sufficient to support a person still
living in the US during the off-season. The employer is relying on that
worker's ability to find work in other seasons, or to decamp to a less costly
locale. Even full-time, year-round work at $14/hour is a poverty-level wage by
census thresholds for a household size of 5 or more.

A lot of Americans have become pinched by increasing living costs and stagnant
wages. They haven't become lazy; they just haven't become more stupid. Working
a job has actual costs and opportunity costs. Does the nearest bus route have
stops near your farm? Do workers have to cover their own insurance costs? Are
they eligible for benefits that would be cut if they have earned income? Could
they earn more in another job with better working conditions?

The expectation Americans have is, like people in other countries, that if
they work all day on a job that can't be easily done by a robot, they should
earn enough to be able to support themselves without further supplementation
via welfare programs or charity. When housing costs and healthcare costs go
up, that means the opportunity cost of living near enough to a farm to work on
it, and assuming the risks of working on a farm, makes the wage minus the
implicit costs of working there less than the profit of working for a lower
absolute wage at a business in town.

These people calling workers lazy have _no idea_ how much it costs people just
to come to work for them. If they did, they would be clamoring for socialized
medicine and public housing, instead of fighting it.

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
Betteridge's Law of Headlines expanded - if the answer isn't "No," it's "Not
yet."

~~~
porpoisely
I suggest calling it the bitxbitxbitcoin addendum.

------
dfilppi
I think I'd focus on manufacturing strawberries rather than growing them in
the ground.

