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Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’
- amelius 11y agoI'm wondering what is so difficult about this task. I mean, all the "good" fruit looks almost the same, so recognizing it should be simple. Also, there's plenty of training material.
- sageabilly 11y agoFruit is not a uniform shape and it typically bruises easily so it can be difficult to design a robotic "hand" to consistently pick up fruit of irregular shape without bruising. This article from Gizmodo does a good job of explaining the difficulties involved: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/why-is-it-so-hard-for-robots-to-pick-up-fruit/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/10/why-is-it-so-hard-for-robo...
- amelius 11y agoLooking from those images, I think they are using the wrong kind of hand. A better hand would simply be a "vacuum cleaner" end, i.e., gripping the fruit by suction power. If it can't be gripped like that, it is probably not fruit that needs to be selected.
- masklinn 11y agoSuction would bruise anything but the hardiest and greenest apples, same as a hickey except now it rots all your fruits. Some fruits are already ridiculously sensible to bruising as it is (pears from the family orchards bruise if you look at them funny)
- shas3 11y ago> I'm wondering what is so difficult about this task. Well, conceptually it sounds simple. But it is certainly a complex engineering problem. You are forgetting building conforming actuators and sensors, controlling these, image registration, the low margin for error, classification performance, real-time processing, etc. etc. Applying the principle of capitalism, if it was simple to design and if a market and technology enables it, then it should already exist. In this case, the market obviously exists (e.g. farm worker demand in fruit industry), so if the solution doesn't already exist, then it is highly likely to be because the problem isn't simple to solve and/or the technology is inadequate.
- oldmanjay 11y agoEven more generally: assuming things that you haven't done must be simple is not a valid argument, just a silly opinion.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoI used to develop food sorters. Color sorting is very simple in principle and much harder in practice. The main difficulties are good lighting, not shaking your cameras and optics to pieces and keeping the optics and lights clean. For fruit sorting in particular there is the very difficult task of conveying the fruit without damaging it. The best sorter in the world won't help you if it mangles the fruit. In my old lab, there are solutions to most of the common food sorting problems, not all of those solutions make it out to the field though.
- scientist 11y agoHow big is this market?
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoTBH, I suck at the business sides of things so I'm not the best guy to ask, but my impression is that the market isn't s great as one might think considering how much for we all eat. There ought to be a lot of room for growth if the machines actually move out to the field. Most of them are sitting inside cleaning plants because they are delicate and expensive. Search for Buhler, Sortex, Allen, Satake, Selgron for some example companies in that space.
- rubidium 11y agoI toured a commercial apple orchard 10 years ago. They use massive parallel conveyor system with laser-imaging for quality and gates to sort. I'd be surprised if this robotic arm+vision system could compete on cost and through-put.
- Retric 11y agoNote this "can distinguish and selectively pick fruit." Right now you either set up nets, have a machine bulk shake a tree and take what falls, or pay someone to pick ripe fruit. The conveyor system would then sort the collected fruit. This system either replaces human collectors or significantly increases yields compared to shaking the trees. But, you would likely still need the bulk sorting at a later stage.
- sitkack 11y agoI think this would free migrant farm labor from having the burden of income, freeing them to be wondering poets. Reminds me a recycling sorting robot, which in my country is done by the mentally disabled. Just the kind of person you want to take a job away from.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoI agree. Innovation and technological advances cause more harm than good. Break the threshing machines! Break them all!!
- xtian 11y agoThe industrialization of agriculture has made clear inroads on the problem of world hunger and has markedly increased the quality of food from the time when all farming was manual labor.
- ForHackernews 11y agoSarcasm isn't your strong suit, is it?
- xtian 11y agoActually, it might not be yours; neither of those statements are true. Investigate how much the U.S. government spends on farming subsidies per year and then consider the fact that nutritious food which isn't loaded with pesticides, hormones, radiation, etc is currently considered a luxury good.
- josu 11y agoThis is a bit off topic, but this GIF of a carrot harvesting machine never ceases to amaze me: http://i.imgur.com/UkTalyS.gifv http://i.imgur.com/UkTalyS.gifv
- Toast_ 11y agoEfficiency is a beautiful thing.
- thomasahle 11y agoBut carrots are easier than fruit. If you go to apple or orange plantages, you'll often see the ground covered in perfectly good fruit, because it's too expensive to pick it efficiently. 20% doesn't even make it to the shop: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/04/un-says-europe-wastes-50-of-fruit-and-vegetables-and-america-isnt-much-better/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/10/04/un-says... In addition, being able to remove weeds mechanically, rather than chemically, is a big win for health and environment.
- julianozen 11y ago"Once picked, the fruit can also be sorted by colour so that, for example, red apples can be separated from green apples." So it can compare apples and oranges. Thanks I'm done
- FussyZeus 11y agoYou beat me to that joke. Well played.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- wcummings 11y agoI don't know, people are really really good at things like this (picking fruit), which robots are generally speaking very bad at, and migrant labor is cheap. Why is this a disruptor?
- hugh4 11y agoFor starters, not every country is the US, we don't all have vast hordes of illegals willing to work for next to nothing. Secondly, and without wanting to start a political thread, the US might not either soon because President Trump. Overall there's a point at which this becomes economical (just as there was a point at which automated harvesting of every other crop became economical starting with the 19th century) and it depends on labour costs in each country. It won't be super-soon, but it will happen eventually.
- Jack000 11y agoNever thought I'd see someone endorse trump on hn. September never ends I suppose.
- Shivetya 11y agonot sure if I buy this, while the idea sounds cool the complexity of that gripper tells me that there have to be simpler means to grip fruit without damaging it that would be faster, something along the lines of suction mechanisms where you can stack many of them; like on a roller. What I am getting at is, besides the obvious complexity of the "hand" is how many can you fit into the area and how fast can they move the product? Identifying the good product from bad isn't hard, many food production lines do that and blow off items they don't want.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- compostor42 11y agoAutomation like this is why I call BS on the "we need more immigrants to keep the economy going!" folks. We will be struggling to keep our existing population employed. The last thing we want to do is import even more low-skilled labor who will soon be made redundant. Increasing automation means a declining population is a godsend rather than a problem. Policy makers must be aware of this. I suspect the call for increased immigration are politically motivated (replacing the existing population with a more reliable voting block) rather than sincere economic concerns. This recent article is a great example. The author gleefully explains how replacing the existing white population with immigrants will reduce the NRA's base. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/19/the-nra-will-fall-its-inevitable/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/19/...
- oldmanjay 11y agoThe calls for restricted immigration are certainly politically motivated (mainly variations on "I don't want them getting mine") so what's the difference? National borders mean less and less all the time. Clinging to them to weather this upcoming economic storm is like using an anchor as a liferaft.
- mason240 11y agoAlmost no one in the US is calling for restrictions on immigration.
- scrollaway 11y agoReally now? No one? [edit: You added almost, I can almost agree now ;)] Tougher border control is restrictions on immigration. Why do you think various billionaire nutjobs want to build a great wall of mexico?
- mason240 11y agoNo, it's not. It's enforcing current immigration policies. Moving towards an open borders would be changing restrictions on immigration.
- supergirl 11y agoDISRUPT
- Animats 11y agoFruit sorting systems have been in production use for years. They're very impressive. Vision systems, AI, robotics, and the ability to handle huge quantities of produce. Here's a production scale apple sorting and packing system.[1] The part of the video for "big plant" shows the most automated version. Here's a system for sorting peas.[2] Each individual pea is inspected using computer vision. Each individual pea. Anything that doesn't look like a perfect pea is kicked out by an air jet. Take a look at the speed at which the system is running, as a wide conveyor belt feeds hundreds of peas per second through the machine, with the good ones coming out on one conveyor and the rejects on another. That one machine is doing a job a thousand hand sorters could not do. Automated cherry grading.[3] This video has a good explanation of what's going on, as size, color, stem length, and defects are all checked by a computer vision system. That system can process over 700Kg/hour of cherries. "We're enabling our clients to massively reduce their sorting staff." Tomato sorting machine.[4] This video has slow-motion sections so you can see the tomatoes being sorted. The machine is far too fast for humans to even see what it's doing. There are vision-based sorting machines for almost every kind of produce, and they're in wide use all over the world. All this automated sorting means that customers no longer need to examine produce in the supermarket. The rejects were removed at the plant, and turned into animal feed or something. This makes services like Amazon Fresh possible. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cprDuf0ASzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cprDuf0ASzU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGR6A5MWG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGR6A5MWG0 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3jlq03Gviw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3jlq03Gviw [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz88nsWL4kw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz88nsWL4kw
- aidenn0 11y agoI think you underestimate the quality of a thousand hand sorters. That machine may replace on the order of a hundred hand sorters, but I doubt it's 1000.
- Animats 11y ago6 metric tons of peas per hour per machine. The machine examines the pea from all sides while the pea is in free fall. A human would have to pick up each pea to do a comparable job. A kilogram of peas is about 4000 peas, so 1000 humans would each have to examine 24,000 peas per hour each, or 6 peas per second, to keep up.
- vegabook 11y agoCapital trumps labour, yet again. Talk about a brave new (terrible) world. How is anybody without amazing talent, IQ, and luck in the birth-location lottery, supposed to survive? How are these awful machines helping to advance the wellbeing of humanity? By destroying livelihoods for a few pennies cheaper bananas to those who can already afford to pay more?
- ItsDeathball 11y agoIn the long run, humanity is better off if we're not paying people below minimum wage under the table to pick pears. If a portion of the surplus value generated by these awful machines can be captured and paid to the people they displace, those people can then do something they actually enjoy.
- vegabook 11y agoVery true if, and only if, "a portion of the surplus value generated by these awful machines can be captured and paid to the people they displace". But a very small group of financiers/entrepreneurs/VCs own all the machines, their ownership of the machines gives them an advantage in owning even more machines, and it is not in their nature (ie, human nature) for them to spread the sunshine. That's the problem. That's why we have a vast underclass already today, and it's not getting any smaller, despite the wishful thinking of the technerati (of which I am one).
- cheald 11y agoThe surplus value created by these machines results in a net cost (and thus price) reduction for pears, which consumers (among whom the displaced count themselves) benefit from. Technology drives down production costs, which results in cheaper goods and eventually substitution of inferior goods with superior goods, which is why even the underclass can afford things today which would have once been the strict domain of the upper classes.
- kmicklas 11y agoThe suffering this thing would cause is a failure of our economic and political systems... not the fault of technology.
- ArtDev 11y agoCool. Robots. http://www.fanuc.eu/uk/en/robots http://www.fanuc.eu/uk/en/robots "With more than 100 models, FANUC offers the widest range of industrial robots in the world."
- birbal 11y agoI have some personal experience with applying computer/machine vision techniques to assessing rice quality. In India, rice quality assessment is a high value activity as the difference in per unit weight price is dramatic across different varieties of rice. The longer the grain, as an example, the pricier it is. Discoloration is also an indicator of bad quality rice. Since there is such a huge difference in price, there is naturally cheating, subjectivity and sampling driven errors. We had developed a device that would objectively and quickly measure the rice quality based on a multitude of factors. This was not just software because there had to be way to cancel out any variance due to ambient conditions and it had to be a device that was easy to maintain in a highly rugged rice factory environment. We did really well but where we failed was our inability to break through the powerful rice quality inspectors cartel and even the rice suppliers who were worried about being "found out". Manual inspection was strangely seen as way of having some control over the proceedings.
- anonbanker 11y agoAs an ag/tech startup, I'm very interested in this device. is there a way to contact you for more information?
- birbal 11y agoThis was 7 years back my friend. We built software prototype for measuring dimensions, classifying grain type and measuring color / brokenness. For hardware we had some initial designs where the objectives were - to easily put grains on a platform so they are separated from each other, easy cleaning and lighting uniformity. We had conceived some rotating or vibrating disks for grain separation. But the mechanical part of the hardware wasn't actually built. I have moved on. There is nostalgia around that was triggered by this thread, but nothing more at this point. Sorry to disappoint.