“It's like everybody looks at brick and mortar and says, ‘How do I do digital fulfillment?’” “The whole world's turning into a warehouse in a funny way,” he says. Piaggio Fast Forward CEO Greg Lynn hopes the Mini opens more indoor uses for businesses that want to support curbside pickup and automate operations but don’t want to feel like a warehouse. Gita robots are also used to shop at convenience stores and gift shops and make deliveries to passengers waiting to board flights in about a dozen airports for At Your Gate. At the food delivery company Smood in Switzerland, associates fulfilling orders for customers use Gita robots to walk store aisles and then make curbside deliveries. Search our artificial intelligence database and discover stories by sector, tech, company, and more.īeyond consumer applications, Piaggio has explored potential business use cases for follower robots. The worker issue is particularly acute on fruit and tree nut farms, where the Agriculture Department estimates labor consumes 30 percent of gross income-three times the 10 percent average for all farms. The US Department of Labor says about two out of three workers planting fruits, vegetables, or nuts grown in the US were born in another country. American Community Survey data shows the average farm worker was 39.5 in 2019, up from 35 in 2006, and the average foreign farm worker was nearly 42, since fewer young immigrants are seeking jobs in agriculture. Rural populations are declining, and farm workers are aging, according to the Census. That’s particularly important as the pool of potential farm workers shrinks. Over time, he thinks robots like Burro can eliminate up to 20 percent of labor on farms. He thinks automation is necessary to address labor shortages in agriculture, particularly for harvesting. He’s also VP of innovation for the Western Growers Association, a consortium of farmers that represents half of the fruit-, vegetable-, and nut-growing operations in the US.ĭuflock first met Burro’s founders while working as a mentor for the Thrive agriculture startup accelerator. Walt Duflock helps run a 10,000-acre farm in California’s Monterey County for cattle, table grapes, and other crops. Tastry, for example, uses AI to look for combinations of grapes that can mask smoky flavors at vineyards tainted by wildfires, and a cross-disciplinary team of biologists and AI researchers working with the US Department of Agriculture is seeking ways to protect vineyards from fungus that can spoil a crop. Initial forms relied on following the location of a tag in a person’s pocket, but advances in deep learning and computer vision now allow AI to navigate by “seeing” the world through cameras and other sensors.įruit and nut growers are increasingly incorporating computer vision into their work. Now the makers of follower robots want to coordinate movement around the modern workplace.įollower robots have been under development since the late 1990s, beginning on the ground and extending underwater and into the sky. Artificially intelligent machines trained to follow people or other machines can transform how we think about everyday objects, like carry-on luggage or a set of golf clubs. It's a simple idea that has captured people’s imaginations with depictions in science fiction, like R2-D2 and BB-8 from Star Wars, and in reality, with research projects like DARPA’s robotic pack mule.įollower robots have been tapped for senseless pursuits like carrying a single bottle of water, but robots can also carry tools in a warehouse or just-picked fruit from an orchard to a packing station. When Amazon introduced its home robot Astro earlier this year, it first showcased the robot following behind a person.
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