Hey look, the Chobani commercial apple-picking drones are closer to being a real thing ^_

“AI powered tethered drones picking apples 🤯

These drones use AI image recognition models to determine ripeness and sugar levels in the apples.

Then they use a little arm to pick them.

AI & robotics will completely revolutionize the agriculture industry.”

12 comments

Odd that tethered drones would be preferable over a robotic arm attached to the same cart?
- Precise robot arm control is a surprisingly hard problem. I can see some advantages to being able to move freely in 3D
  
  And you'd still have to maneuver the truck more with the arm. With the tethered drone, they could pull up to a tree and take on three-ish trees from one spot.
Sounds interesting but is there somewhere aside from that garbage website I can read about this?
- @LibertyLizard @sam_uk
  
  Youtube
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0zGlWHYV3Q
  
  Gizmodo
  https://gizmodo.com/the-apple-drone-is-finally-here-1848441547
  
  Thanks! I also found this one: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/06/northwest-oregon-apple-washington-farm-harvest-robots-robotics-orchards-agriculture-technology/
- https://spectrum.ieee.org/video-friday
  
  I'll try not to post links to the birdsite again.
  
  Thanks! I’m actually pretty excited about this technology although as with any automation it will come with challenges to ensure that wealth is distributed fairly.
  
  Putting those aside for now, the technology is limited today but it seems as though it may soon be able to perform tasks human workers cannot. I’m hoping that eventually smaller, more mobile robots may be able to maintain and harvest dense, diverse agricultural systems that are too labor intensive to compete against today’s modern farms.