Robot cauliflower harvesters to replace vanishing migrants UK government boffins have announced that they will develop a sophisticated new infravision system, intended to let robotic machinery harvest cauliflowers and lettuces. With the migrant labourers who normally do this deserting Blighty's shores in droves, droid harvesters are seen as the only way to prevent crops rotting in the …
"Falling numbers of migrant labourers means that healthy crops cannot be gathered"
So, we have vast numbers of the long-term unemployed and petty criminals wandering around with tags and ASBOs as our prisons are too full - why not get them to harvest the crops? Or would that violate their human rights?
FFS.....
don't tell the Daily Mail.
a) That the immigrants are leaving (they will have nothing to write about)
b) That our food is being zapped by robots! They will insist that we need to have a label telling us so, so we can make an (il)informed choice!
I'll get the yummy mummys to jump in there 4x4's and form a picket line.
What you mean the 4x4's have to go into the countryside, where there is mud and a lack of Deli's? Oh scrap that idea, lets get a Latte instead.
I mean, if people can invent a chicken hoover to automatically collect up the contents of a barn and convert them into McNuggets, surely a cauliflower machine would be easier? After all, cauliflowers don't flap around or anything.
(And seriously, there was a chicken hoover for collecting them up. Amazing bit of kit.)
I did this for several years during school and later university. It's a perfect job for all the students who are complaining there are no seasonal jobs to go around because of the recession. Of course, it's hard, physical labour and involves wielding a big, heavy, very sharp knife so the Student Union/Elf'n'Safety brigade would probably put a kibosh on that!
We have 2.4 million "unemployed". I say "unemployed" because only a portion are genuinely unemployed, the rest are feckless, lazy b'stards.
Rather than waste money on robo-pickers, simply make picking up the hand-outs dependent on them picking enough veg.
It's win-win-win.
The farmer gets cheap/free labour, the feckless b'stards get an idea of what it means to do work and the government gets to cut the benefits (thus, save my taxes) for all those too lazy to get off their fat arse.
Same goes for all the detritus that is scattered all over Britain. Put the unemployed to work picking it all up (or the ASBO brigade or whomever).
I connected to the ARPAnet using packet switching technology in 1969. If I recall correctly, the connection I used had been operating for over a year, perhaps two, at the time. The basic concepts involved have not changed since then so any claims to invention need to predate this.
The harvesting technology is very significant. Since farmers tend to skimp on hygiene or hygenic break time for their field employees, fecal contamination of vegetables and fruits is a very serious problem. A successful mechanical harvester would improve E. coli transmission prevention, for an example.
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