I saw a report of that on the news. Gimmick. Harmless. I'm more impressed by the robots that can tend herbs and salad greens correctly and grow them hydroponically with a tenth of the water as normal. I didn't catch what the power and other resource outlay was though. Stoop labor is bad for people and has little upside for them, so I have no issues replacing some farm labor with more machines. Not sure about the viability of large scale hydroponics, and if it's environmentally or practically sound, but I'm okay with the idea. The guys growing meat from animal cells freak me out, however. No Frankenfood!!!!

In comparison, a robot cook, is no biggie.

And I don't mind 3D printed food, assuming that the machine is properly cleanable, if it's vegetable puree and meant to be more pretty than nutritious (breaking down the cells by rendering it to smooth goo does rob food of a number of nutrients). Rendering meat 3D printable is gross.

I don't see any robots.

Automatic machines making food have been around for many years.

dcarch

Plllog, having robotic workers to tend farm crops would be very helpful to most farmers I know. They are always short handed, no one wants those jobs, certainly none of the local people will do it and the labor shortage is only getting worse.

The robots might be a very welcome help.

I'm with you on the 3D printed meat, though, that's just icky.

Annie

Annie, it would be great if they could make robots that can tend to actual farms! That's probably decades in the future. In the report I saw, the accomplishments being touted (at least by the news media, if not the labs) were that they could move in all directions, and do the gentle, tender handling of delicate plants. And that's in an environmentally controlled lab. But, yeah, robots that can understand which bits to snip off, which to shelter and which to pick would be such a boon!

That's actually why the robot machine in SF is good news. Roomba, and its lawn mower cousin, is pretty non-threatening, but a lot of worker robots are both dangerous to work around and take jobs that people don't mind filling. Plus, just the idea is scary. But burgers aren't scary, at least once you get past the saturated fats and sodium content, so any fun way of introducing people to the future (assuming the waters don't rise and the earth don't die) is good fun. :)

"plllog

Annie, it would be great if they could make robots that can tend to actual farms! That's probably decades in the future.----"

Lots of farming are already being automated. Robots don't have to look like humanoids.

The advances in digital technologies and machinery is beyond normal human comprehension. In one respect, these advances are driven by legal minimum wage requirements. But that's for the Hot Topics Forum to discuss.

dcarch

But, yeah, robots that can understand which bits to snip off, which to shelter and which to pick would be such a boon!

I don't really see this as efficient in hydroponics, since all plants are exactly the same age and the maintenance is so minimal. You'd have to have hydroponic farms as large as industrial field farming for that, and one of the biggest benefits of hydro is that you can put a lot of plants in a small area, so it lends itself very well to small urban farms and such. I have a little hydro tower in my courtyard that lets me grow tomatoes, eggplant, lettuce, peppers, kale, mizuna, oriental mustard greens, herbs, nasturtium, celery, chard, etc. in a space three feet in diameter. There's a big hydro farm in a suburb of Orlando on top of the local bank, for example.

But if you're interested in hydroponics, you ought to check out aquaponics, which is now being done on a commercial scale, although the fish raised is usually tilapia, alas.

I guess crowds in San Francisco are easier to impress than when I lived there. I did see a news article on this on TV a month or two ago, and they pointed out that there are no robots and that they are simply using machines. I think in Japan they have something that comes closer to a robot chef. Not all machines that replace tasks normally done by humans are robots.

"--- I think in Japan they have something that comes closer to a robot chef.---"

This?

dcarch

Dcarch, what I meant by actual farms was standard till the soil under the sun and rain farms.

I don't think robots have to be humanoid at all. The difference between a real robot (some industrial robots are really just articulated machines) and standard machines is sensory decisionmaking. The ability to gather information, analyze it and act upon it. Smart machine. Not artificial intelligence, which requires higher order thinking. More something that is programmed to acquire input rather than waiting around for someone to enter it.

To me, it's just dedicated machine to do a task. It seems more for show, than work. A true multipurpose machine that could be trained to do any cooking task is on the horizon. Imagine your own prep robot in the kitchen to handle irregular shaped vegetable prep.

I'm so wary of engineered meats and near-meats. They are now serving the Impossible Burger at certain places around here, and engineered plant blood taste just scares me, and I'm far from a technophobe.

Dcarch: No, I was talking about this:

With extremely sophisticated object recognition software already here, micro cameras, GPS already in many toys, there is no question that there will soon be available household voice operated mechanical assistants soon, just one more appliance for the house.

I want a drone programmed to chase away birds and squirrels in the garden.

dcarch

I want Rosie! (Jetsons) I'll even take the attitude. :) If she can climb stairs, that is. a vacuum cleaner was the inspiration for R2D2....

You probably could program such a drone. 20 years ago there was a quadcopter with scary red and black crow faces, but, of course, you had to drive it yourself...

dcarch, I want that drone too, to keep the birds out of the cherry trees. I can't always trust the local bears to do that. I also want it to keep the deer from eating the young fruit trees and the raspberry plants, keep the geese from eating my blueberries and keep the turkeys out of my heritage corn so that I can actually have some to grind to cornmeal. So I want an all round pest controlling drone. Oh, and I want one that can find tomato worms too, the blasted things are nearly invisible....

Annie

My current main pests are squirrels, and they eat my apples, but I do not have problems with birds. In Venice, birds would eat a lot of my figs, but mainly the ones at the tops of the trees that I could not reach anyway - plus I always got way more figs than I could eat/give away, or use. I do miss my fig trees. We have an electronic contraption that is supposed to scare away pests, but I don't think it works that well. We got it to keep raccoons out of our fountains.

Right now I have pitaya that is beginning to fruit, and so I am going to have to build some cages to enclose the fruit to prevent possums (or whatever) from eating them before I do. One pitaya flower seemed to get pollinated without my help, and I'm not sure how that happened, but I forgot about it the night the flower opened. The rest I hand-pollinated. I'm expecting ripe fruit by the end of the month. We had a lot of pitaya in Brazil, and pitaya juice is perhaps my favorite juice - after guanabana, and I can get that at the Mar Vista farmers' market, imported from Oaxaca. They also have mamey ice cream, which used to be impossible to find, but now I am finding mamey paletas everywhere.

I also need a Jetsons' Rosie. I never even noticed her attitude - I've had to deal with maids that were worse.