Robotic Following Cart to Replace Light Duty Tractor Tasks?

[daugen]

I just thought, that if it had a moment between tasks, it could bring me a cold beer.:drink:

I bet that robotic arm could do that quite well...
Very impressive how far they have come.
Looks like little burro has all grown up.

 

[candersen10]

I bet that robotic arm could do that quite well...
Very impressive how far they have come.
Looks like little burro has all grown up.

The robotic arm certainly is something we have on our roadmap. Dexterity as an area remains extremely costly right now, and still quite slow, so it's hard to see how to deliver autonomy picking in the crops that we are in (table grapes especially) immediately, although in the next 3-5 years that will change.

We've been thinking, in the immediate near term, we can already do some crop scouting with our cameras/ai (video here), then are planning on modularly adding autonomous spraying/spot spraying, uv lighting to kill certain pests/disease/mildew, and perhaps some things like autonomous mowing. In essence we have a little 5 HP 4WD tool carrying platform that can run all day, with about 350 pounds of weight, and a lot of modularity such that anything can be bolted to it. Everything is online so you can log in anywhere and see everything each unit in our fleet is doing in real time too, which is quite cool (video here - each dot is a robot - you can also click into them and see what they see on their 12 cameras)...

 

[candersen10]

Here's one of these Burros at work in a Nursery. They are excellent little tow tractors in operations where routes can be re-run all day.

 

[rScotty]

Interesting thread. I grew up in a picking and harvesting family. That kind of life always comes down to the price of labor.
rScotty

 

[candersen10]

Interesting thread. I grew up in a picking and harvesting family. That kind of life always comes down to the price of labor.
rScotty

rScotty, yes of course. Most fresh produce in the US is grown in California. This year, min wage has been set to 13/hour and you can work crews for 50 hours a week before you hit overtime. Next year, that clicks up to 14/hour min plus a limit of 45 hours / week before you hit 1.5X overtime. The year after (2022), that clicks up to 15/hour and just a 40 hour work week. In essence, each year by law labor gets 7 to 8% more expensive, and 10 to 11% less available.

In short, the particularly labor-intensive crops are hitting a threshold where labor renders them no-longer sustainable. This is why 80% of the worlds almonds are grown in California - it's one of the only high-value crops that can be all machine harvested. For table grapes, caneberries, stone fruit, fresh market blueberries, and many other crops, there's no mechanization available.

This is where our Burros slot in. Autonomy you can buy today (there's virtually nothing else on the market) in a people-scale platform that can later be expanded towards further automation.

We are constantly thinking about the what else to add question also. Should we add a 26 to 33 inch mower deck to mow for example? We generally look at these questions through the lens of labor - if there are a lot of people doing the work, there's likely high value via automation.

 

[aczlan]

A mower deck might be useful in smaller crops, it seems to me that in larger crops such as apples they won't need something that small.
Anywhere you can fit a tractor through a tractor would probably be a better fit, but in smaller rows I can see where something like that would be useful.

Aaron Z

 

[rScotty]

rScotty, yes of course. Most fresh produce in the US is grown in California. This year, min wage has been set to 13/hour and you can work crews for 50 hours a week before you hit overtime. Next year, that clicks up to 14/hour min plus a limit of 45 hours / week before you hit 1.5X overtime. The year after (2022), that clicks up to 15/hour and just a 40 hour work week. In essence, each year by law labor gets 7 to 8% more expensive, and 10 to 11% less available.

In short, the particularly labor-intensive crops are hitting a threshold where labor renders them no-longer sustainable. This is why 80% of the worlds almonds are grown in California - it's one of the only high-value crops that can be all machine harvested. For table grapes, caneberries, stone fruit, fresh market blueberries, and many other crops, there's no mechanization available.

This is where our Burros slot in. Autonomy you can buy today (there's virtually nothing else on the market) in a people-scale platform that can later be expanded towards further automation.

We are constantly thinking about the what else to add question also. Should we add a 26 to 33 inch mower deck to mow for example? We generally look at these questions through the lens of labor - if there are a lot of people doing the work, there's likely high value via automation.


View attachment 681301

Interesting....To tell the truth, I don't know quite what to do with your reply because it is so contrary to what I experienced that it makes little to no sense to me. In fact, now I am wondering if this "Burro" is real or just a hopeful pipe dream. If the latter, hang in there. I don't want to put up objections to anyone's dreams, but a bit of a reality check never hurts.

Although farming expenses do go up, basing your business decisions on the farm wages you show seems like an unrealistic and even somewhat bizarre type of metric. Frankly, it sounds academic rather than realistic. Perhaps someone has given you some bad information. If so, you may want to look into who and why.

I'm willing to grant there may be a few specialty farmers who pay minimum wage. Our family ran across one of those farmers one year while working in a vinyard grapes north of San Francisco. That was a wonderful winter. But they didn't do it the next year and we never ran across another - although our family did farm labor for decades.

The majority of farmers don't pay a minimum wage now, they never have done so, and I doubt they ever will. Not even close. Nobody checks on what farm workers are paid; as a political issue it's not even close to being on any realistic agenda. I'm not trying to be flip; but I am surprised to hear anyone quote those inflated farm wages.

Farmers don't pay that much because legally they don't have to. Adults doing farm labor - as well as children working with adults and/or parents - are specifically exempted from the requirements of minimum and overtime wages under the provisions of both the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Farm labor has been exempt from any sort of wage protection for my lifetime, my parent's lifetime, and back before them. There are a few simple outdated safety standards, but that is all.

As a prospective harvest worker, just bringing the subject up to a farmer would mean that you wouldn't get the job. It would label you as a potential troublemaker. From the farmer's viewoint, why should he bother to negotiate? There are plenty of others willing to take on the work.

I'm just not sure that Mechanized Burros relate to Farm Wages as you proposing in post #275.
rScotty

BTW, we were called "Harvies" - both among ourselves and also by the larger farming community. It's not entirely a respecful term but we wore it proudly.

 

[candersen10]

Interesting....To tell the truth, I don't know quite what to do with your reply because it is so contrary to what I experienced that it makes little to no sense to me. In fact, now I am wondering if this "Burro" is real or just a hopeful pipe dream. If the latter, hang in there. I don't want to put up objections to anyone's dreams, but a bit of a reality check never hurts.

Although farming expenses do go up, basing your business decisions on the farm wages you show seems like an unrealistic and even somewhat bizarre type of metric. Frankly, it sounds academic rather than realistic. Perhaps someone has given you some bad information. If so, you may want to look into who and why.

I'm willing to grant there may be a few specialty farmers who pay minimum wage. Our family ran across one of those farmers one year while working in a vinyard grapes north of San Francisco. That was a wonderful winter. But they didn't do it the next year and we never ran across another - although our family did farm labor for decades.

The majority of farmers don't pay a minimum wage now, they never have done so, and I doubt they ever will. Not even close. Nobody checks on what farm workers are paid; as a political issue it's not even close to being on any realistic agenda. I'm not trying to be flip; but I am surprised to hear anyone quote those inflated farm wages.

Farmers don't pay that much because legally they don't have to. Adults doing farm labor - as well as children working with adults and/or parents - are specifically exempted from the requirements of minimum and overtime wages under the provisions of both the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Farm labor has been exempt from any sort of wage protection for my lifetime, my parent's lifetime, and back before them. There are a few simple outdated safety standards, but that is all.

As a prospective harvest worker, just bringing the subject up to a farmer would mean that you wouldn't get the job. It would label you as a potential troublemaker. From the farmer's viewoint, why should he bother to negotiate? There are plenty of others willing to take on the work.

I'm just not sure that Mechanized Burros relate to Farm Wages as you proposing in post #275.
rScotty

BTW, we were called "Harvies" - both among ourselves and also by the larger farming community. It's not entirely a respecful term but we wore it proudly.

Scotty, I've spent the past 4 season living with crews day to day. Take what I'm saying above as coming from someone very close to the on the ground realties, and far far far from an academic perspective.

What you are describing is not the way things are going today, at least in California, where most fresh produce (and all table grapes, where our product is used especially right now) is grown.

Our two largest customers hire 5000 plus people daily from June to December to harvest fruit. Half of their revenue goes to labor. Next year, min-wage goes from $13 to $14/hour, and 1.5X overtime hours go from 50/week to 45. One of many sources on this here: As CA minimum wage increases, agricultural growers absorb costs | KBAK..

In this world, autonomation is becoming more and more attractive, hence what we are doing. The question, to me, is how to start a successful business given all of the trends. Our approach has been trying to take a step by step approach - phase 1 - autonomous motion, phase 2 - plant by plant crop data plus low dexterity autonomy / implements, phase 3 - high dexterity (i.e. autonomous picking etc.), as the technology matures and economics continue to make autonomy more attractive.

How does something akin to a Farming Wall-E start? To me, it starts as a farm robot that helps people work more productively in very high need areas, and which over time can do more, hence what we are doing now.

 

[aczlan]

Interesting....To tell the truth, I don't know quite what to do with your reply because it is so contrary to what I experienced that it makes little to no sense to me. In fact, now I am wondering if this "Burro" is real or just a hopeful pipe dream. If the latter, hang in there. I don't want to put up objections to anyone's dreams, but a bit of a reality check never hurts.

Although farming expenses do go up, basing your business decisions on the farm wages you show seems like an unrealistic and even somewhat bizarre type of metric. Frankly, it sounds academic rather than realistic. Perhaps someone has given you some bad information. If so, you may want to look into who and why.

I'm willing to grant there may be a few specialty farmers who pay minimum wage. Our family ran across one of those farmers one year while working in a vinyard grapes north of San Francisco. That was a wonderful winter. But they didn't do it the next year and we never ran across another - although our family did farm labor for decades.

The majority of farmers don't pay a minimum wage now, they never have done so, and I doubt they ever will. Not even close. Nobody checks on what farm workers are paid; as a political issue it's not even close to being on any realistic agenda. I'm not trying to be flip; but I am surprised to hear anyone quote those inflated farm wages.

Farmers don't pay that much because legally they don't have to. Adults doing farm labor - as well as children working with adults and/or parents - are specifically exempted from the requirements of minimum and overtime wages under the provisions of both the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Farm labor has been exempt from any sort of wage protection for my lifetime, my parent's lifetime, and back before them. There are a few simple outdated safety standards, but that is all.

As a prospective harvest worker, just bringing the subject up to a farmer would mean that you wouldn't get the job. It would label you as a potential troublemaker. From the farmer's viewoint, why should he bother to negotiate? There are plenty of others willing to take on the work.

I'm just not sure that Mechanized Burros relate to Farm Wages as you proposing in post #275.
rScotty

BTW, we were called "Harvies" - both among ourselves and also by the larger farming community. It's not entirely a respecful term but we wore it proudly.

Not how recent your data is, but around here (NY), most farm workers are H2A workers, they get paid at least minimum wage and their employer has to house them as well as pay for their transportation to/from their home.
People who are paid piece rate are exempt (per: Fact Sheet #12: Agricultural Employers Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) | U.S. Department of Labor ) as are employers who have at least one quarter in the previous year where they had less than 500 "man days" (5 workers working for 1 hour or more in a day would be 5 "man days" more or less 8-10 people working at least 1 hour per day for the farm 5 days a week) but many states (including NY: Farm Labor - New York State Department of Labor ) require that your piece rate be at least minimum wage no matter the farm size.
Here are the new CA laws regarding overtime for farm workers: Overtime for Agricultural Workers which do include requirements for overtime.

Aaron Z

 

[candersen10]

These are now running at night to treat powdery mildew: