Robot suit gives farmers extra strength
January 12th, 2009 by James
Finally, a robot suit that gives us all the fun of farming without any of the tiresome heavy lifting:
The Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has developed an agriculture robot suit designed specifically to help out with tough agricultural work like pulling radishes. The suit has eight motors fitted over the shoulders, elbows, back and knees to provide a power boost to the wearer. The current model weighs a hefty 25 kilograms, but developers hope to halve the weight and have it on the market in two years, retailing for between 500,000 and 1 million yen.
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I for one welcome our new farmer overlords.
This surely would help the dwindling agricultural community
but, why don’t they just make robots who will do the picking. That would be cool if they use those robots in the Car industry
robots would bruise the crops and it would be less expensive to put a dude in a robotic suit with experience that to develop an AI to judge how hard or how soft to pull. It works for cars because, unlike plants, they’re all made of hard materials and identical to each other due to assembly line mass production.
Besides, we don’t want our cabbages welded.
Such a suit has been shown a while ago in a military version.
I wonder what effect wearing the suit for a longer time has on the muscles of the wearer.
Personally I like the suit best that lets people who normally have to use a wheelchair walk again.
I can not image what kind of feeling that must be, even if you have to rely on a machine.
Several powered exoskeletons are being developed in Japan, and the US is working on at least one for military use. Japan is investing heavily into robotics to counter-act the effects of their dwindling population. One application for these exoskeletons is to allow nurses to work more effectively by being able to lift and move patients by themselves.
Most large scale crops growing operations are done mechanically anyway. I’d think that this is of more use to very small operations or even home garden purposes. On a large scale this just isn’t practical. Very keen idea though.
So are the radishes HUGE in Japan? Elsewhere they’re relatively tiny and pretty much anyone can pick AND lift them without robosuit helping out.
As usual someone has gone and translated the word ‘daikon’ as ‘radish.’ Yes, daikon are pretty chunky.
While I don’t know know if this idea is practical or not, the great majority of farm work done on these small- to medium-sized farms is by older people, often retired.
Digging up and pulling up daikon (obviously just one common farm job) is more work than you’d think, especially if you are 60+ years old.