Sweeper the robot designed to pick peppers

Sweeper the robot takes 24 seconds to pick a single pepper. However, researchers point out that they have slowed the robot's movements on purpose for safety reasons.

Even at this relatively slow pace, the robot is far from accurate with only 61 percent accuracy in picking the fruit. The Sweeper is fitted with LED lights so that it can pick no matter what time of day it is. It can work about 20 hours per day.

There is a shortage of farm labor in many areas

A recent California report notes: " Farmers in every growing region of California continue to report difficulty hiring enough employees to work in a variety of agricultural occupations—including planting, cultivating and harvesting food and other crops—according to a survey conducted by the California Farm Bureau Federation. The survey, conducted during summer 2017, showed that 55 percent of responding farmers had experienced employee shortages. Of those farmers who hire employees on a seasonal basis, 69 percent reported shortages of varying degrees. Problems have been more acute among farmers whose crops require the most intensive hand labor, such as tree fruits and grapes." Robots may eventually be used to supplement or even replace some this labor.

Robots are being used to pick other crops

Robots are being tested for picking other crops such as strawberries. Agrobot has a robot that can pick strawberries as described on their website., Green Robot Machinery has a robot that picks cotton and is developing other machines for picking other crops: "Green Robot Machinery Private Limited is a Farm Robotics Company focusing on machines, which assist humans in improving their productivity and minimize the drudgery in farm operations. The machines will help in improving the farm income and also make farming sustainable and eco friendly without the need to change the agronomic practices currently followed. GRoboMac is developing smart machines for harvesting cotton and horticulture crops like egg plant, okra and capsicum. Technology such as 3D machine vision and Robotics is used to make these machines smart and automate some of the tasks done by humans. The machines can be customized to do other labor demanding tasks like weeding, pruning and spraying. The Cotton Harvesting machine has been field tested and would be available commercially by June 2019."

Metromotion an Israeli startup is doing research on a tomato-picking robot.

The agricultural robot industry is expanding quickly

According to Market Research Engine the agricultural robotics area is expected to be worth $75 billion by only 2025. Those who made Sweeper hope that eventually Sweeper will not only help reduce the farm labor shortage but also reduce the amount of food spoilage. However, the robot still needs work and a commercial version is not expected to be ready for three to five years.

Previously published in Digital Journal

Facebook said to be developing its own cryptocoin to transfer funds

Facebook will build a crypto coin that is crafted to make it easier to transfer money on WhatsApp, according to a Bloomberg report. The coin will be focused on India and will allow Indian workers abroad to send funds back home.

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Coin should solve problems in international transfers

Other Bitcoin startups have already started working to solve problems involved with the difficult and expensive processes in international transfers of funds.

The Bloomberg announcement notes: "The company is developing a stablecoin — a type of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar — to minimize volatility, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans. Facebook is far from releasing the coin, because it’s still working on the strategy, including a plan for custody assets, or regular currencies that would be held to protect the value of the stablecoin, the people said."

Tether is the most prominent stablecoin at present, even though some have expressed doubts about whether it is back to one US dollar for each Tether as the company claims.

Back in May, the Cheddar news channel first broke the news that Facebook was developing its own crypto coin noting that Facebook had been considering the move for some time: "Facebook started studying blockchain almost a year ago, when a member of its corporate development team, Morgan Beller, began looking at how the social platform could use the emerging technology. At the time, Beller was the only Facebook employee devoted to studying blockchain, the digital and decentralized ledger that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Her work was thrust into the spotlight this week when Facebook announced that the vice president in charge of the Messenger app, David Marcus, would lead a new team to “explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch. Marcus leads a team of less than a dozen Facebook employees working on blockchain. Before joining the company, he was the president of PayPal, which facilitates transactions between users in Facebook’s Messenger app. "

The Facebook coin would have its value based on the US dollar. This should minimize the volatility of the coin compared to more prominent coins such as Bitcoin, the number one cryptocoin by market value which have a high volatility as to their value. There are numerous details still to be worked out. It would appear that Facebook is still far from releasing the coin as yet. Indian foreign workers may have to wait a considerable time before they can actually make use of the planned coin.

Previously published in Digital Journal