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Fruits and nuts are increasingly incorporating computer vision into their work. Tastry, for example, uses AI to look for possible grape combinations smoky flavor mask In vineyards infected with fires, and a interdisciplinary team The vineyards of biologists and AI researchers working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture are looking for ways to protect themselves from fungi that could ruin the harvest.
Walt Duflock helps run a 10,000-acre farm in Monterey County, California for cattle, table grapes and other crops. He is also president of the Western Growers Association of Innovation, a consortium of farmers that accounts for half of all U.S. fruit, vegetable and nut growing operations.
Duflock first met Burro’s founders while working as a tutor for Thrive’s agricultural launch accelerator. In his view, automation is necessary to address the labor shortage in agriculture, especially for the harvest. Over time, he believes that robots like Burro can wipe out up to 20 percent of farm work.
This is especially important as the number of potential farm workers is reduced. The rural population is declining, and farm workers are aging, according to the Census. American Community Survey data shows that the average agricultural worker in 2019 was 39.5, more than 35 in 2006, and the average foreign agricultural worker was almost 42, as fewer young immigrants are looking for work in agriculture. The U.S. Department of Labor says about two out of three workers who grow fruits, vegetables or nuts grown in the U.S. were born in another country.
The labor problem is particularly serious on fruit and nut farms, where the Department of Agriculture estimates that it consumes 30 percent of gross labor income, three times the average of 10 percent of all farms.
“Burro gives them something to reassign [resources] if they do, because right now there is a big gap between the labor we need and the labor we have for the agricultural industry, ”says Duflock.
Piaggio, the manufacturer of Vespa scooters, also sees a future in robots that can be followed by humans. A few weeks before Amazon released the Astro, Piaggio Fast Forward introduced the GitaMini, a robot that can carry you up to 20 pounds and a robot that has followed you 20 miles away. Gita means short trip in Italian, and is developing a small robot Since 2015. Piaggio announces that GitaMini is capable of carrying a week’s food from a person living in an apartment or apartment.
Beyond consumer applications, Piaggio has explored the potential business uses of tracking robots. At the Swiss food distribution company Smood, partners who meet customer orders use Gita robots to walk the store aisles and then make street deliveries. Guitar robots are also used to shop at convenience stores and gift shops and make deliveries to passengers waiting to take flights to a dozen airports for At Your Gate.
Piaggio Fast Forward CEO Greg Lynn hopes Minik will open up more indoor use for companies that want to automate street picking and operations but don’t want to feel like a warehouse. “The whole world is becoming a warehouse in a ridiculous way,” he says. “Everyone looks at the brick and mortar and says, ‘How do I do digital filling?'”
Outside, Lynn wants trackers with tires to operate on farms and in semi-structured industrial environments. At a construction site in Colorado, the company tested Gita robots that work as a team earlier in the year and follow a human or other robot. In theory, dozens or hundreds of rovers could go one after the other in a pelotoning practice comparable to a fleet of autonomous trucks moving in a single train or convoy. Platoons of guitar robots provide food and other items to residents of New Haven, a planned community in Ontario, California. But platooning can raise questions how many robot assistants are too many before it becomes a frightening or healthy reflection of the dynamics of work capacity.
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