IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 49

wiNNers
& losers

2009

they are faster and more flexible.
"It's nifty the way it works,"
says Tony Grift, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the university
of Illinois at urbana-Champaign,
who recently visited Kondo. "And I
think you could market it in Japan.
In America, I doubt it. We aren't
going to grow strawberries in greenhouses anytime soon."

"imagine
the robotic berry
picker escaping and
running wild. sounds
like a movie i've seen."
expeRt Call

-robert W. lucky

"If you are interested in developing robots, it is a fascinating task,"
says John Billingsley, professor of
mechatronic engineering at the
university of Southern Queensland,
in Toowoomba, Australia. "If you
are interested in harvesting strawberries, it is not the way to do it."
A better solution, he says, would
be to just raise a lot of strawberries,
harvest them all at once with a
dumb mechanical device, and then
sort out the good ones. "It would be
cheaper to raise more strawberries
than it would be to build expensive
robots," he adds.
Billingsley suggests that the
choice is similar to one that an
engineer might make when designing a dishwasher. You could make
a robotic dishwasher, he says, by
taking a standard industrial robotic
arm, putting it in front of a sink with
a dishcloth in its grip, and programming it to do the task. However, that
would make little sense because
"it's so much easier just to bundle
the crockery into a square box and
squirt water at it," he says.
Labor shortages do mean that
automation is coming to agriculture,
says Billingsley, "but it has got to be
the right kind of automation."
o
58

nA * ieee spectrum * JAnuAry 2009

01.RadaR

pRooF #2

12/5/08 @

www.spectrum.ieee.org



http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum January, 2009

IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 1
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 2
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 3
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 4
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 5
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IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 32
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IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 35
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IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 40
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 41
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 42
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IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 44
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 45
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 46
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 47
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 48
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 49
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 50
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 51
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 52
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 53
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - 54
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum January, 2009 - Cover4
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1117
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1017
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0917
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0817
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0717
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0617
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0517
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0217
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0117
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1216
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1116
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1016
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0916
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0816
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0716
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0616
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0516
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0416
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0316
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0216
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0116
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1115
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1015
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0915
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0815
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0715
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0311
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0211
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0111
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1110
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1010
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0910
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0810
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0710
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0610
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0510
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0410
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