Robots picking artichokes might not be as tough as you think. I think a sufficiently motivated teenager with ROS could do it half-assed right now. That's a shor

Robots picking artichokes might not be as tough as you think. I think a sufficiently motivated teenager with ROS could do it half-assed right now. That's a shorthand way of saying I reckon I could do it ;) Generally, the hard problems with robotics are related to sensing. Stuff like inverse kinematics and gripper movement are mostly handled in ROS if you can build a model. Recognising the artichokes is not that hard as you might think given OpenCV as a primitive, and if you could get a near-field sensor using structured light it would actually be easy. This is not possible right now but will be in the next few years (unsubstantiated prediction). Anyway, what I am saying is that you would be surprised how fast the boundaries change between "hard" and "easy". The things people are doing now with a $200 irobot create and a $100 kinect are blowing my mind.