fruits

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Strawberry pickers beware, the robots are comingon a windy morning in California's Salinas Valley,

The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization fruits

Another company, San diego-based Vision Robotics, is developing a similar lettuce thinner as well as a pruner for wine grapes.

In Southern California, engineers with the Spanish company Agrobot are taking on the challenge by working with local growers to test a strawberry harvester.

it allows the robot to make a choice based on fruit color, quality and size. The berries are plucked

and placed on a conveyor belt, where the fruit is packed by a worker. Still, the harvester collects only strawberries that are hanging on the sides of the bed,

hence California's strawberry fields would have to be reshaped to accommodate the machine, including farming in single rows,

raising the beds and even growing varieties with fewer clusters. Experts say it will take at least 10 years for harvesters to be available commercially for most fresh-market fruit not a moment too soon for farmers worried about the availability of workers

said Lupe Sandoval, managing director of the California Farm Labor Contractor Association.""If you can put a man on the moon,

"Sandoval said, "you can figure out how to pick fruit with a machine

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Solutions to Our Problems: Teleports, Telesurgery, and the Food Pillthe FUTURIST magazine has featured recently potential oefixes

and uncommon solutions to various big problems facing the world. Patrick Tucker of THE FUTURIST highlights several of them below.

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by Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive, which has hired more than 100 engineers from Apple, Google, Microsoft and other high-tech companies.

Its product, introduced in late October, is a digital thermostat, combining sensors, machine learning and Web technology.

Matt Rogers, 28, a Nest cofounder, led a team of engineers at Apple that wrote software for ipods.

He loved his job and working for Apple he said. But he added: oein essence, we were building toys.

SENSORS on fruit and vegetable cartons can track location and sniff the produce warning in advance of spoilage,

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