Robotic Lettuce Farming?

Recently, two men have developed a product that attaches onto a tractor and allows it to decide which lettuce heads to pick and which heads to leave in the field until they get ripe. The product uses a series of sensors that keep track of information such as the tractors location, the color of the lettuce heads, and the height of the crops. It uses this information to help it make decision on the spot. The pair who invented the product launched their business in Sunnyvale, California in 2011, and have since then raised $13 million to help them launch their product.

Link to the original article with more information on the product and its promises: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/get-ready-for-robot-farmers-100613764059.html

I think that this automatic farming system is a pretty cool thing that will help farms become more efficient. I think that that is awesome because the more food that farms produce the more food the world will have. I also think that it shows a lot of potential. The idea has a decent chance of catching on a being implemented on a larger scale than on small lettuce farms on California. I could see this technology being used in the fields of Iowa in the near future. The technology also shows that robotics has a pretty promising future in today's society. Robots are really useful for doing things that are either very stressful on the human body or are just not even possible. With less people working in jobs that involve manual labor their will be more people working on jobs that will help come up with new ideas for improving society (I'm not saying that jobs that involve manual labor are not important, but I am pretty sure that most people would rather have jobs that let them express their own ideas and opinions).

Hopefully more jobs that involve intense manual labor can take advantage of technology to make the lives of the people doing those jobs more easily. I think that in the very near future self automated farming equipment could be a very common sight in farming areas such as the mid-west. I also think that robotics will be more wide-spread in a variety of job areas.

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