LONDON, ENGLAND - Sure your new prototype can mass produce and out-google me with its brain, but can it beat me in a thumb war?
Silly as that might sound, it’s this simple task that has stymied the cutting-edge robotic industry in its endeavors to replicate what many say separate man from beast: our hands.
“Maybe the hardest part is not playing the game, but moving the pieces,” Carnegie Mellon University Roboticist Siddhartha Srinivasa told Wired.
We in produce know as well as any other industry how necessary human touch is when harvesting everything from cherries and berries, to mushrooms.
Tentacles, claws, any way you play it, there is no mechanism like that of a hand. And it is a race with a tempting reward at the finish line for those trying to recreate it.
With the monetary and quantity advantageous in the industry of becoming more mechanised, as well as the safety enhancements less human touch provides, this is a daunting hurdle.
Fast food giants and business afficianados like Ed Rensi, former President and CEO of McDonald’s, and Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr., have both expressed interest in automized stores and their advantageous.
Likewise, a little closer to home, the fresh produce industry was abuzz when Soft Robotics created a robot with a grip that doesn’t damage the skin of soft produce. But we still aren’t there yet.
Wired reported that the winner of the Amazon Picking Challenge, a robot contest to grab several different loose objects for the best time, was to the caliber of a mechanical snail race. “Like watching paint dry,” an observer told the news source about the event, where the champion struggled to grip ten items for the winning time of 20 minutes.
So what might it take to get us there? Well, we’ll start with a handshake. Then maybe we’ll declare a thumb war.
