Wall-Ye is a French robot. Stories about Wall-Ye indicate that he prunes, de-suckers and can pick grapes. He even is supposed to have a GPS that automatically turns off when he strays so he won’t pick your neighbor’s crop. And to prevent robot-napping, his gyroscope signals, “Help!” when some would-be snatcher lifts him off the ground.
Wall-Ye’s basic purpose is to increase yield by pruning and de-suckering better than humans. Weighing 44 pounds, it has four wheels, two arms and six cameras.
This is Wall-Ye:
Whether the Wall-Ye stories are slightly exaggerated or not, we do know for sure that robots are on the farm and becoming more adept at doing what people have been accomplishing for millennia.
Strawberry Picking Robots
For the strawberry grower, a 16-arm picker has been developed. Amazingly, after the agrobot’s sensors are shown specific berry colors, it then selects the ripe ones and deposits them in its small metal baskets.
In this video, at 0:58, you can see it clipping the berries. Otherwise, the focus is on the worker depositing the berries in their packages.
Rather than using color sensors, this strawberry picker will use electromagnetic radiation that measures water content to identify the sweetest berries.
Our Bottom Line: Productivity
As you can see below, robotic innovation will continue the trends that have propelled U.S. agriculture during the past century.
Farm output is up:
Farm population is down:
Farm size is up:
