But can it pick a strawberry?

[Brassmask]

Automatic Ham Boning Robot - Mayekawa HAMDAS-R : DigInfo

Until now, boning 500 hams per hour required 20 people. But using HAMDAS-R, only 10 people are needed [GW's note: with the other 10 offered to Skynet in sacrifice]. The robot's consistent processing capability also makes production planning easier. From now on, Mayekawa intends to market HAMDAS-R worldwide, primarily in Europe and Japan.

"Thinking about irregularly shaped, soft items, most kinds of food come into this category, including fish and vegetables. We'd like to build up our know-how regarding how to automate their processing, so we can construct a general-purpose system for handling irregularly shaped, soft items."

[Religious Dick]

Yes.

Strawberry harvesting robot

[Brassmask]

The Edwin Hawkins Singers - Oh Happy Day

[sirs]

How about pull a child.  A little creepy, but now doable

Good to seeyas, Brass     

[BT]

Good to see robotics is making so much progress.

If the goal is to build up a huge underclass with nothing to do but breed this is one fine way to go about it.

[Plane]

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v303/n6/full/scientificamerican1210-42.html

One of the ideas discussed this month in Sci am mag is a foraging robot.

It needs to be something like a mechanical cow, it will wander the woods and feilds grazeing on biomass , deadwood , grass whatever. This it will burn in an external combustion engine and charge up its batterys.

  Whenever its batterys are fully charged it returns to camp and delivers its charge to the use of the camp, either being the wall socket itself or chargeing stationary batterys.

    I wonder if these mechanical cows will need mechanical cowboys?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I wonder if these mechanical cows will need mechanical cowboys?

They would be useless if they did. They would be programmed to do their thing and cowboys would be unnecessary.

[Plane]

I wonder if these mechanical cows will need mechanical cowboys?

They would be useless if they did. They would be programmed to do their thing and cowboys would be unnecessary.

Their purpose is based on organic creatures , a heard of robots could graze rough biomass and produce energy from scattered trash and deadwood , if they had a central unit that was strong AI the individual units of the heard could be simpler.

[Brassmask]

That huge underclass with nothing to do could then enjoy a nationalized education system designed to create a population of educated folks who could spend hours and hours a day thinking of new ways to make life better for everyone on the planet rather than the underclass of folk who clean toilets and pick fruit just to make a few dollars a day to buy food and heat to remain alive so they can go back and clean toilets and pick fruit.

[Plane]

That huge underclass with nothing to do could then enjoy a nationalized education system designed to create a population of educated folks who could spend hours and hours a day thinking of new ways to make life better for everyone on the planet rather than the underclass of folk who clean toilets and pick fruit just to make a few dollars a day to buy food and heat to remain alive so they can go back and clean toilets and pick fruit.

Why would that happen?

Wouldn't thier labor becoming superflouous be tragic for them?

Who would be the maker of the robots? Who would be the owner of the robots?

I don't see someone with a low paid menial job buying his own replacement.

Are maids buying stacks of roombas?

[BT]

That huge underclass with nothing to do could then enjoy a nationalized education system designed to create a population of educated folks who could spend hours and hours a day thinking of new ways to make life better for everyone on the planet rather than the underclass of folk who clean toilets and pick fruit just to make a few dollars a day to buy food and heat to remain alive so they can go back and clean toilets and pick fruit.

We already have a nationalized education system. The likely candidates who would be replaced by these robots are the same folks who didn't take advantage of the opportunities presented by the free k-12 system.

But produce picking robots could help solve the illegal immigration problem.

So there is that.

[Xavier_Onassis]

If we could do away with all physical labor by using robots, then we would have to do something to provide some sort of occupation for all the people who once did that sort of work, or we would have a cultural breakdown and perhaps a revolution.

[Kramer]

Zager And Evans - In The Year 2525

[Religious Dick]

If we could do away with all physical labor by using robots, then we would have to do something to provide some sort of occupation for all the people who once did that sort of work, or we would have a cultural breakdown and perhaps a revolution.

You ever heard of Soylent Green?

[Kramer]

yummy.

great food!