Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers

[The Straight Story]

Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
Eliza Strickland Email 06.21.07 | 2:00 AM

(photos of planned devices at link below)

As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it.

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.

The robotic work has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, and pushed forward by the uncertainty surrounding the migrant labor force. Farmers are "very, very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future," says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa.


It's a surprising new market for Vision Robotics, which had been focused on developing consumer devices, including a robotic vacuum cleaner to compete with iRobot's Roomba.

When a member of the California Citrus Research Board approached the company in 2004, Morikawa was doubtful that an effective robotic picker was even feasible. A citrus grower brought the skeptical engineers to an orange farm in California's fertile Central Valley, where they walked down the neat rows of trees and stared at the oranges hanging in the branches.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/06/robo_picker

[Sapere aude]

1. This is what will happen if the immigrants are gone. Those who think the farmers will raise wages

and hire Americans to pick fruit are full of pectin! No you would not pick fruit or do the work the immigrants are doing because no one will pay you what you want.

[BushOut06]

2. Not according to Hannity

According to Hannity, Americans are just lining up to do these jobs. :sarcasm:

[silverojo]

3. Are you implying that Americans DON'T want work?

It's real easy to sit back when you're well off and pretend that other people wouldn't do ANYTHING for a living. There are literally people being hired to sniff people's armpits as part of deodorant testing (even Johnny Carson talked about this, way back when he was hosting the Tonight Show). There are Americans doing all sorts of unpleasant jobs.

The problem isn't that Americans won't do these jobs. The problem is, these unscrupulous employers won't HIRE Americans, because it's illegal to pay them slave wages.

Put the blame where it belongs--on the employers.

[treestar]

5. Supposing there really were more jobs open than there were Americans

This can happen in a growing economy.

No one said they're not willing to work, but if they have better jobs, they're not going to quit them to take these.

[treestar]

4. If they're going to all that trouble, then there really aren't Americans

who are willing to do those jobs.

So hmmm, how to make these robots "illegal?"

[dkofos]

6. They go to all this trouble and expense to get a reliable picker

at the lowest cost. Sort of like hiring illegals.

[treestar]

7. But won't new jobs pop up in the robot industry?

We don't want to be Luddites.

Do we make robots here, or do we get them all from China?

[originalpckelly]

8. Good, that's what should be done. There's no reason for slavery.

And in the long run, the machines will probably cost less for their owners.