I grew up in a remote village in south India. We had over two dozen coconut trees in our yard. I made a long loop in the mud that went around all these trees. I'd pull water out of the well using a rope & pulley & pour it down the loop. The water would wind its way until it reached all the two dozen trees. About an hour of this water pulling & the loop would stay wet for a few hours. This sort of manual work was standard fare for a young teen. Even then, in the 1970s, there was a shortage of coconut harvesters. The ones who showed up to harvest coconuts were quite poor, thin with ribs showing, and were well known through the village for this skill. It was quite a dangerous task - due to rains some of the trunks could be quite slippery. There were snakes in many of these trees! As a kid I wanted to learn, so they tied a rope around my waist to get me to clamber up the coconut tree. I wasn't able to - you get calluses on your palms & feet & it cuts through the skin as well. If you stick a tall ladder next to the tree, and climb to the topmost rung, you can tie an iron sickle to a rod & using the sickle, chop off the coconuts - but you have to stay clear of the falling coconuts! So a robot harvester of this sort is quite welcome. Its a pretty ingenious device.
Here, we follow a different method to cut the coconuts. The harvesters do not climb the tree. Instead, they tie together bamboo poles to form one long pole and tie a sickle to one end. The harvester then cuts the coconut bunch from the ground.
It is much more efficient and faster than climbing the trees. When I was young, I was fascinated by their craft. They are so good, that they could determine how ripen the coconuts were just by looking from the ground. Some times from very tall trees that are over 100 feet tall. And to balance a pole that large..
I would love to see someone come up with an ingenious solution for a similar job, but is much more dangerous, difficult and nuanced - climbing palm (palmyra) trees to get palmyra juice.
The tools they use are a loop made of fiber from palmyra leaf and a leather shield. The பனையேரி (literally means palmyra climber) wears the loop over their foot and the leather shield over their chest and they pull themselves up to the top of the tree. It's a brutally punishing and exhausting task.
climbing palm trees and cutting down those palm fruits (called nongu in Tamil Nadu) is much more harder.. probably 10x more harder than coconut tree. Long poles with sickle may help in harvesting coconuts, but not the palm fruits.. a robotic arm with motorized blade will be ideal for palm trees.
I grew up in Kerala (the place the robot is demoed). The method you mentioned is tough in a densely populated place like mine. Palm trees grow in our yards. A human needs to climb the tree and drop the coconuts carefully to avoid breaking tiled roofs or causing any other damage.
I believe it might be an issue with this robot too. But you can see this requirement in the design of other tools. It always involves climbing the tree.
Here people train small monkeys to climb and harvest the coconut fruits. The monkeys can only fell down old dried coconut fruits as the young fruit has tough stem, which requires knife to cut (obviously you wouldn't want to train a monkey to use a knife). The practice is now banned in many regions, so it's about time for robots to take over.
One time as a tourist I stayed at a guest house in the Kerala backwaters. My host had several coconut trees and gave me a shot at climbing one. There was this contraption I harnessed to myself with a strap around the tree and I made it up a fair bit before realizing that there was no way in hell I was going to go any further, let alone perform any meaningful act of dexterity at the top of the tree. Everybody had a good laugh.
Very interesting way to climb. When I was a kid I used to climb various trees but nothing straight and branchless like a coconut tree. Just looked up this on youtube[0]. The safety harness makes sense and the the loop for the feet does as well. As it goes, in India the coconut climber job is dwindling fast so this robot climber is very good replacement at the moment.
I visited South Indian villages during summer vacations and my grandfather had 5 coconut trees in his urban garden. Someone will come by to climb and harvest the coconut when it’s time to get them down. One of my fav memories is him tossing green coconuts into the water well during summer. It will keep cool even when it’s crazy hot temperatures and we will just fish one out when the kids get thirsty.
Tender green coconuts will float because of the fibrous outer covering. Climbing the trees was dangerous and seemed scary. Coconut trees have no branches and it’s literally climbing all very rough tall pole barefoot. Amazing. I can understand why there’d be a shortage. The coconut climber was always in demand!
During 1970's time frame that OP is talking about, it is largely the effect of thousands of years caste based discrimination that denied education and basic rights for a big chunk of the population.
Today it is problem of economics.
Coconut trees typically grow in state of Kerala, a lot of the population there work in the Middle East oil economies , the pay is considerably better there. Paying competitively does not make enough money to be worth the effort.
Coconuts outside the big cities event today are dirt cheap you can get a dozen for something like $1.
Kerala is not easy place to be a immigrant, It is big semi urban region - think like American suburbs. There are hardly any cities where immigrants can get affordable housing, this is because lot of the money the state makes comes from remittances from middle east, they don't feel the need to migrate to the city for better jobs.
In recent times there has been some immigration into the state from North Eastern part of India especially in the food and construction sectors - housing is on-site or the restaurant is in the city.
Education statistics were compiled in the British era, and these were referenced by Dharampal in his book 'The Beautiful Tree' which records the extensive education present in South India. Like a lot of claims, this doesnt stand up.
Nor does the claim of 'caste system started in colonial era' make sense.
Aside: For people interested in learning more about what I am talking about, read up Nicholas Dirks, Balagangadhara or Jalki, Pathan.
In short, hierarchies existed between different groups in India, but these do not follow a 'ancient thousand year old varna system'. For instance, Majority of the kings(and dominant land owning jatis to this day) are not Kshatriyas,(nor Brahmins or Vaishya) who were initiated into thread ceremony. This includes famous Hindu kings like Vijayangara era Hakka/Bukka who came from shepherd jatis.
Lol , even today basic literacy is in the 70th percentile.
I can count in fingers how many from my village in south india from my grandfathers generation went to school or could read/write.
The reason congress first lost power in tamil nadu was partly because of caste based education proposed by rajagopalachari. Mid day meal program was pivotal in MGR's continued popularity . Education has always been key factor in politics since at least independence.
Sure there were exceptions and few kings could seize power with support from their powerful communities . They still remained illiterate though.
Education was only given to favoured few. Only few had access to God. A king could perhaps come from some random caste never the priest. he still comes from brahmins. Access to God and education was and still is weaponized to discriminate
The discrimination against women is the same, sure there were rare exceptions for women queens with power. never a single priest though.
If you want to read more about this, please look at the 11th chapter of James Tooley's book https://www.amazon.in/Beautiful-Tree-James-Tooley/dp/0670083... on "the uprooting of the Beautiful Tree". Tooley was researching low cost private schools in different parts of Asia and Africa.
He follows up the references in Dharampal in British Home Office records, which catalog the reports sent on native education by collectors to the governor Thomas Munro (including 'caste' statistics).
Tooley also read the work of Andrew Bell, on how mass education in Britain and later Europe was strongly influenced by what Rev Andrew Bell(who had come to Madras to manage a school) learnt about the methods of peer learning in native schools in Madras.
Dharampal's book is available online for free, and Arvind Neelakantan has a review of Tooley's book.
Some other disagreements, its not just 'few kings' but majority. The 'priest' claim is also not true. Majority of the mathas in say Karnatak and TN are run by non-brahmins, and there are plenty of pujaris from other jatis, not that that is a position of social privilege given how poorly paid they are and difficulty in getting married.
so are you saying india was economically flourishing in the 1970s and today suddenly there is poverty that you would not pay the tree climber? how much did you make in the 1970s selling coconuts? Re 1? equivalent to 1/50th on the US dollar?
Huh? I said today there are better jobs abroad what has that do with poverty ? . It doesn't matter how rich or poor the farmer is. If coconuts sell at some price and he has to compete with middle eastern job market he won't pay if he cant get returns on his efforts.
In India, dangerous stuff often pays less due to caste and other considerations. Manual sewage cleaners have a really high death rate in India and are paid peanuts.
Casteism is an Organized mafia operating in South Asia since 700 BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda which is evident from the fact that 50% Ministers in Modi Cabinet are Brahmin; And Brahmin are just 3% in India;
The caste system existed long before Europeans ruled India. Caste system has roots in the Vedic society.
"The varnas originated in Vedic society (c. 1500–500 BCE). The first three groups, Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishya have parallels with other Indo-European societies, while the addition of the Shudras is probably a Brahmanical invention from northern India."
... "there is no evidence in the Rigveda for an elaborate, much-subdivided and overarching caste system" [1]
Caste and any discrimination is abhorrent, and like others have commented is a more recent phenomenon. In old times and today, anyone can become a priest/Brahmin by learning. [2]
The "Caste system" has European roots connected to the monopoly of one book, one god and the all powerful church.
In Europe the king was the representative of god and got his powers through the church. Then came the merchants, landowners who funded the state. Artisans took the next rung. The unskilled workers took the most menial jobs came last.
We call this today as the class system but this was the original caste system imported from Europe and applied on the native population of India.
While one can not deny that there were/are different communities and a kind of class hierarchies in India just like in the rest of the world. The rigid caste system is actually the work of the Church. In India each community had its own gods and its own chieftains and priests.
Even in the West we consider some jobs off-limits to holders of certain offices. Imagine a SCOTUS judge cleaning sewers for money or shooting porn when the court is not in session.
Caste works in a similar way, but is determined by birth.
I donot Think children of potus would suddenly become sewer cleaners either. is that determination by birth?
Problem has been and is poverty. if british government treated india like england none of these problems would exist.
British government treated English (and much worse, Irish) working class like dirt too. Poverty in 19th century Britain was indescribable, even though people like Dickens tried their best to put the images into writing for future generations.
Victorian Britain was extremely classist.
However British government developed institutions in England and Ireland which eventually led to overall greater wealth and equality for most of the population. Whereas in India these institutions were systematically short-circuited to create inequality and a locus of power/wealth that favoured British colonialists.
Oh, the British Raj treated the Indian poor and lower classes like untouchables, with a good dose of racism mixed in.
I've seen images barring Indians from establishments; this report mentions "No dogs or Indians allowed" https://www.smh.com.au/world/no-dogs-or-indians-colonial-bri...
You still see casteism and classism in Indian today, although it may be more subtle.
They do demand more. My parents house has 3 trees. The price per tree has increased. Its difficult to get people and if we get someone they usually agree to their price. This in city though not village. Its still a dangerous job. One of the guys who used to come to our house broke his ribs falling from tree.
Palm thorns are letal. I don't have any problem with macaques being trained to do such dangerous job instead having humans doing it. They are much more fit for the job and have the right tools. I couldn't care less about what Petaheads, trying to collect money with sad histories, think about that.
On the other hand, to say that caste system in India is an European thing, is the same as claiming that British introduced Hinduism in India. This is a very naive point of view IMAO.
Most of them wouldn't have had formal education, which will make their negotiation skills weak. So there could be a prevailing rate based on poor pricing and general agreement of those rates (both on the supply and demand side). Additionally, this puts them in a different social bracket which is more used to taking orders than making fair demands. This of course is not unique to this particular trade.
However, I don't think the skills were particularly in short supply especially back then (I am from Kerala, which translates to 'land of coconuts'). Ultimately the coconuts did get pulled although the workers weren't paid so well.
- There are a lot of alternatives to coconuts so if they become too expensive at market, people will buy other fruit, putting a ceiling on potential harvesting costs. If no one will do it at the price, better to just not pick them.
- There might not be an actual shortage, but since harvesting is a specialty craft that the whole business is beholden to, and too seasonal to hire in-house, the harvesters have lots of temporary power and scheduling optimization requirements between farms that makes it feel like there is a shortage. Kind'of like swimming pool builders in spring.
Guessing up an explanation from half a planet away: if there are more palm trees than harvesting capacity, but harvesting capacity is sufficient for coconut demand, soft influence on harvesting capacity allocation will determine which coconuts get harvested. In a perfect market this would still balance out at maximising harvester income (on a low level but still), but it's easy to see that the market wouldn't be that perfect.
>>Just out of curiosity, if there was shortage of coconut harvesters, why were they poor? Can't they demand more money for the task?
Because at some point, it's not viable to harvest them. We're not talking about thousand acre farms. But if you have a few trees and a coconut ends up costing you xx whatever, then F it, let them fall when it's too late.
Most Indians, me including and people I know of, do not understand the concepts of pricing that Western countries talk about.
Even now, in 2020, this comes up frequently in product pricing when I talk to founders in India who haven't seen the Western notion of pricing first hand.
Describing pricing according to demand as being the “Western notion of pricing” is one of the most bizarre things I’ve read on the internet recently. I say this as a resident of a South East Asian country where Chinese and Indian immigrant merchants have prospered plenty due to a keen sense of price and value.
Agriculture in Europe runs on underpaid, often illegal, immigration.
There's pressure on the consumer side not to pay, say, a tomato more than a few cents, which means you either pay workers peanuts or you just don't harvest them.
There are a lot of people that don't understand it in the west as well. It's also not as easy as some people make it sound. After all, it's the perceived value of both parties making the trade and not the actual value that's important.
Yes, take the original situation for example. The coconut harvester and the person employing him perceive the work to be of very low value.
As such, the actually valuable work with high danger, which should've been paid appropriately is significantly underpaid.
/edit: maybe its easier to relate in the context of the tech industry... while it has significantly less impact on the employees live its prevalent there as well, and in both directions.
fresh graduates which get less then a third of a full employee while still producing basically the same value to the employer. (this obviously depends on the graduate, but surely everyone knows that people at the start of their career tend to be significantly underpaid). both the graduate and the employer just don't perceive their work to be as valuable.
its just as easy to find the pendulum swinging in the other direction as well... people which might even effectively sabotage the work of others while still looking perfect to the person paying the bill, essentially increasing their perceived value to the person paying the bill while effectively reducing the actual throughput/quality.
> but surely everyone knows that people at the start of their career tend to be significantly underpaid). both the graduate and the employer just don't perceive their work to be as valuable.
If everyone knows this, then why isn’t there an employer taking advantage of this arbitrage opportunity to pay the new graduates more and use their “valuable” labor to generate valuable products for sale?
The answer is that no one knows the exact numerical value of the “value” of someone’s labor. Hence we rely on the buyers and sellers’ making offers to each other and coming to an agreement. As long as there are many buyers and many sellers, working independently, the market value should become evident.
Sometimes the buyer pays a little extra, sometimes the seller pays a little extra. It’s when there is no price transparency and insufficient number of buyers and sellers that the signal gets noisy.
Pricing in the Western systems is all about finding out how high you can price so fewer people pay a lot more which offsets running a larger scale business to serve more customers at lower price points. So these systems have accepted that not everything is for everybody, and do not even make an effort to get things to people. US healthcare is a good example here.
Countries with much large populations can not run that way, not everything at least. We are still learning to balance, which is why I want to adopt a region-based pricing for anything I build. Since customers from Western nations get a kick by paying more, I say, let them. Get and money and subsidize for the rest.
The US is not "The West". Price/market segmentation, which is what you're describing (by region) is not exclusive to India or "The East".
"Finding out how high you can price" things is more of a strategy for veblen goods, it is certainly not how everything is priced nor exclusive to any geographic region... I don't think I'm following this at all. :)
The west has prices for lower income groups as well via coupons and other distribution channels hidden away or made inconvenient for higher paying customers. Part of pricing is capturing as much of the demand curve as you reasonably can.
I'm guessing that while there is a shortage, coconuts are so low value that no one will pay them more. So they tend to be hard to find but paid poorly.
As with any traditional profession in India, tree climbing is caste based and caste is based on birth. A persons profession is decided based on which family they are born into. In every village or town, there will be a family who does this job generation after generation. The castes who perform low level jobs such as tree climbing, weaving, farm labor etc. are collectively known as the Shudras. Shudras are the lowest level in the caste pyramid and were historically oppressed and were denied basic rights such as education.
Being illiterate and unorganized, they don't have any negotiating power, which is the reason for lower pay. They also had no choice because they were told that they were "born" to do this work.
The reason for shortage of harvesters is that, the latest generation does not want to take up the family job because of poor pay and low status. The younger generation wants to get educated and move to big cities to find better jobs, thanks to the progressive reforms and loosening of the caste system in the recent decades, at-least in urban areas. The current generation of tree climbers will probably be the last or second last generation who does this job.
> I made a long loop in the mud that went around all these trees. I'd pull water out of the well using a rope & pulley & pour it down the loop. The water would wind its way until it reached all the two dozen trees. About an hour of this water pulling & the loop would stay wet for a few hours.
IIUC this was your role un maintaining the trees, and wasn't related to harvesting the coconuts? So it was for irrigation, I guess?
The coconut is harvested at different stages and used for different purpose
- Tender coconut - Havested at very early stage and mainly used for the water. They have cream inside that is yet not solid and more water. Good for drinking only.
- Slighly ripe. These are the coconut used for cooking. They have solid inside and less water. Grated coconut and coconut milk are made from this. Virgin coconut oil is also made from these.
- Old ones - Mostly the coconut that falls naturally. Outside is fully brown in color. They have no water inside. And the solid cake is dried and pressed to extract oil.
Mature coconuts fall off naturally, but they taste yucky. All the water dries up & becomes milky. If you don't harvest young coconuts during the prescribed interval, the water becomes undrinkable. But we use mature coconuts for oil. You crush it & set it out to dry in the hot sun, make coconut flakes etc. Also, its dangerous to let coconuts stay up like that. In every village there's always 1-2 stories of kid who died when playing in the orchard because dried coconut dropped on him.
Given the fact that the training that goes behind this is a brutal busniess and the fact that monkey is a God figure, it would not be received well in India, I believe.
It's India - if it exists, it's holy. Holy cow, holy monkey, holy (cow) shit, holy elephants, holy snakes, holy rats, holy rock formations, holy wells, whatever.
Incidentally my aunt's home is located right next to a snake shrine of old (yes, they give offerings to snakes, mostly cobras, there), even though the area is predominantly resided by Muslims. On the other hand, there is a Hindu temple in another district dedicated to the worship of a Robinhood-esque thief who was a Muslim - and the offerings are mostly alcohol (and previously weed).
Looks like this was an undergraduate learning project rather than a practical solution to harvesting coconuts.
It reminds me of ABU Robocon, where undergraduates representing different countries compete to build the fastest robot using off-the-shelf parts that can solve an abstract problem. The point wasn't to fix a real-world issue but to serve as a learning tool, push technological boundaries and hopefully land a job while doing it.
> The contest aims to create friendship among young people with similar interests who will lead their countries in the 21st century, as well as help advance engineering and broadcasting technologies in the region.
There recently was a huge controversy in Thailand about using monkey labor for coconut harvesting which resulted in many shops and even countries considering banning thai coconut milk. [1]
Since then I've been thinking: why is it so difficult to harvest coconuts? Surely a pair of long clipper or some sort of stick-like device ought to do it? I've popped a few coconuts myself of trees, it's not that complicated, right?
> Coconut trees that are harvested for milk tend to be taller than 15m, so monkeys are often used instead. [1]
So 15 meters is a lot of stick though, is it really not doable? Ladder and a stick? Surely there's a simple way to reach it?
The only answer I manage to find is that coconut farmers generally can't afford _any expensive devices_ thats why they use monkeys or climb the trees or rig up these cheap dangerous devices.
So reading the news about a bloody robot, the most expensive and complicated solution that can be applied to this scenario, just makes me laugh really.
Those who have coconut farms would afford and appreciate this device, though. It’ll help them harvest coconuts on time. Also, being a robot created in India, the price outs highly likely to be much lower priced and affordable compared to something invented and made in the US or Germany, for example.
I don't think this is the right thread to discuss the ethics of animal labor but veganism argues that use of animal labor is unethical and that's where the contraversy originated.
Many people have more empathy for animals than for humans. The idea of a monkey forced/encouraged to climb a tree for a coconut tugs at their heartstrings the way a person does not.
Not sure this is the best place to belabor ethics, but the reason it may seem someone has more empathy for animals is because animals are fully helpless to understand what's being imposed upon them, and they are always in an enslaved relationship with us.
Free human adults may be the victim of a circumstance that has them shambling up coconut trees, but they have an end to end understanding of why they're doing it, and they still have a domain of choice that's always broader than that of any animal and the enslaved.
I don't think too many people who are against animal labor are for human slavery. Free humans who get to tacitly choose which crappy job to do in their squalor still much more power than the enslaved. We can even reach self-actualization as long as we are given the illusion of free choice among bad options. Rescuing lower sentience from slavery comes before rescuing free humans from crappy choices, imo.
It seems like you're answering on behalf of a large group of people with differing views that your comment doesn't at all reflect. I, for one, oppose this monkey labor and I would argue I don't have more empathy for "animals than for humans." I try to be equal in many respects and would oppose humans being coerced into doing this as well. It's why I oppose slavery, for instance.
If I understand your point correctly that monkey labor in Thailand is fine because bulls are used for labor in India, I don't follow. Why are using bulls in India justified for you, and why does that justify monkeys in Thailand?
As the other commenter said, why would you assume I even have an opinion on Indian bulls, let alone supporting their labor?
I don't have a problem with bulls/bullocks being used for labour and neither do I have a problem with monkeys being used. We use animals for a range of functions - donkeys, horses, goats, dogs, cows, camels, chickens, ducks, geese, pigs.. even elephants.. why not monkeys?
Normally I would agree, but you answered a question asking what the problem would be with this approach, and I think it's reasonable to then read "many people" as referring to "those that oppose monkey labor." Maybe you didn't mean that, however, so I'll of course allow for the benefit of the doubt.
An ox is forcibly neutered, then forced, often with a torturing device (whips, nose rings etc), to toil in the burning sun for days. Untill his joints give up, and he is killed.
I know I'm excaggerating. But it annoys me to no end that we came to think this is 'a happy life' in any remote sense. An ox, to me, is on the furthest part of the spectrum of forced labor.
I found Harari's Book 'Sapien' very enlightening on the parts about the history of human abuse to animals. Oxen get a honorary mention.
> Those monkeys can live a happy life in the same way as an ox that pulls a tiller.
Those are very strong implications you are making. What makes you think an ox that pulls a tiller is _happy_?
Generally enslaving an animal to do something is considered unethical. How we much of "unethical" we accept as a society is a completely different matter though.
These are wild animals who are abducted and then chained to do forced labour. It doesn't sound like a happy life and if they had a choice in the matter, I doubt they would volunteer
All of the pets in your home wouldn't choose to live with you if they weren't conditioned to already. You would need to abduct them one way or another. They wouldn't volunteer to become food, either. Getting caught by another animal mean becoming food is the alternative to forced labor.
Ox, horses, nowadays service dogs, animals have been used for a long time as workers in the West. I find the double standard incredible here, especially since it’s impacting very negatively the economy of a developing country. Making a label and the related checks about monkey abuse would be enough to solve the problem without banning their use.
Not all coconut trees are the same. And also harvesting coconuts are dangerous job. The established coconut farms (and backyard trees) are very tall, combining with too many heavy fruits, it's an incident waiting to happen both for harvester and people on the ground. So the safer way to harvest coconut is to climb to the top, tie a rope, saw the fruit branch and rappel. I can't say for Thai's method, though you can't just use a long stick and cut the fruits.
Is expensive if you need to buy it and have one or two palms, not so if you can just phone and hire a man with a robot a few times a year. Professional coconut harvesters would be either moved off the path, or could invest into buying a robot and be able to reduce their risk and work also with a broken arm or having a mild disease. It depends on robot price. If a coconut harvester is getting old, I can see how their digitally native sons or grandsons would want to buy one for easing his life.
The biggest problem is that 15 minutes to mount the robot (and a similar time to disassemble it again, probably), is probably more time that an experienced harvested would need to climb and take the fruit down.
> As the population increasingly moves towards tech jobs, there's now a shortage of coconut harvesters in India.
This seems a very bold claim. I can believe that there is a shortage of people willing to do this job, but it is very hard to believe that the reason is the tech jobs.
Even in the USA IT workers represent less than 5% of all jobs.
Otherwise interesting how automation is increasing around the world.
I don't think it's because of tech jobs. But it is true that there is serious shortage of coconut harvesters in South indian states. The job is not very well paid compared to risk ( coconut market itself is not very stable and rewarding). Not sure if there are any good occupational accident insurance policies available to them.
It is shifting the labor market though. For example, those tech workers are eating out far more often, so there is greater demand for the Indian equivalent of burger flippers (dosa flippers?), which could be considered preferable job compared to the higher risk occupation of coconut tree climbing.
I find that claim fairly dubious as well.
The primary job killer currently is COVID-19, and it has hit India hard.
There are numerous restrictions on labour and several farmhands \(migrant workers from other states\) have returned home.
Worth noting that the university in question is situated in the same province, Tamil Nadu.
Section 144 has been imposed, which is a law that prohibits gatherings/assembly and gives the police sweeping powers to arrest/detain curfew breakers.
Point to note: migrant workers from other states are needed to work in the southern farms. The missing farm labour force are invisibly employed elsewhere. I would wager that it is in the tech sector.
I disagree. I took a look at Labour Report by the Government of India, https://labour.gov.in/sites/default/files/Report%20Vol%203%2..., which is based on the 2011 census data. A large portion of India's population is still poorly skilled.
Besides, the tech sector has a higher barrier to entry compared to the blue collar and agricultural sector.
Well, I'll say that Indian state demographics change slower than those of 'developed' countries.
Besides, California is an outlier, even within the States.
I also agree with you. However, there are large downstream effects of tech jobs.
1. Lots of people in rural places migrate to urban and semi urban places and make a living off of providing some sort of service to people in tech jobs.
2. A large section of young population in rural areas come to cities and start businesses, very small scale, such as eateries, curry points, trades, cab drivers, etc.
3. A good chunk of people go into the maintenance and services sector, such as building maintenance, sweepers, contractor jobs, etc.
4. A good chunk are employed in the large and ever expanding construction works in almost every nook and corner of India.
So each IT tech job, indirectly employs a bunch of other jobs, most of which are done by younger people.
So tech jobs do put a huge dent on the availability of labor services.
As an example, I am an engineer in a highly respected company, earning on par with an IT guy. But in the last decade, labor cost (daily wages for unskilled labor, usually in the construction business) has gone up to be about 1/4th of what I earn in one day. And that is a significant increase. It used to be about 1/10 of what I earned.
People may not be employed in that industry but many seek employment in it. Even when it pays much less than what would be considered reasonable, it’s more than what other professions pay. But yes it’s a dubious claim that IT is actually absorbing all that labor, more likely that IT industry has created an economic boom that has created non IT jobs in cities and not many younger Indians find the idea of being a coconut picker an attractive career.
This applies to other professions as well: education naturally makes families aware that they don’t need to continue in menial professions in villages so they send their kids to towns or cities.
I remember a bitch by someone that worked providing low income housing. What he said was one 'tech worker' whatever that tech is. Indirectly generates 2-3 support jobs. So for every tech worker you need to house 4 people.
In the case of India with a rising middle class for every family there are three other families providing services to them. No matter how shitty that work might be it's probably easier than harvesting coconuts.
I remember things my Mexican friend said about his family. In the 50's their grandfathers were seasonal farm workers in California. And then full time farm workers. The next two generations left farm work for things like working autobody shops, painting cars, making high end furniture. My friend and his brothers run and electronic assembly business. So moving up.
It is now possible to educate even the poorest kids to become tech workers. Many leave their villages and move to cities. I can believe it. Tech has truly created massive upward mobility and raised so many people out of crushing poverty. It is actually remarkable and something that always amazes me..this power of education.
This is good as a learning exercise and may be result in something useful in future. So for sake of learning and advancement good. As far as claims to replace coconut harvesters, a bit of a stretch to probably attract funding with marketing.
Why not built a mechanical crane with a platform to help the worker to do better job with safety at heights to harvest a coconut and than apply the same for multiple tasks like repairing street lights. Cleaning the building facades and homes, cleaning and arranging work at heights. I believe existing technology can do it.
There wouldn't be much space for a crane to move around the trees which would be spaced around 20 feet each I guess. Even a small crane takes up lot of real estate and also crush everything under its weight.
You could probably use a scissor lift; but it's pretty expensive; someone said the trees are 15m, a new scissor lift that goes that high is in the neighborhood of $40k USD, in the US. Most likely more expensive in India.
That’s where the innovation comes up, use materials and structure to bring down the costs. Even if initially it costs higher, it can pay back by it’s multi-use, maintenance, energy efficiency by using mechanical energy applied by human muscle with creative use of hydraulics and mechanical designs.
Usually multi-purpose robots cost way higher and requires more maintenance and costs. Given the average labour costs in India with over 10% unemployment in urban areas and much higher in rural areas created by economic mismanagement for second term by the current government. I believe human labour is more versatile and cheaper, if supported by right amount of technology in India. It’s crucial for its development.
Along those lines, seems you could design a far simpler, non-electric frame that could be rolled up a trunk with a mechanical cable/waldo cutter for the coconuts.
Yes agree with you there are more than one solution, crane was just one thought. This is thinking out of the box and a cornerstone of innovation. My concern with robotics is sometimes it's much easier to use humans and with application of sufficient amount of technology can be much better. In some cases robots are essential where humans are too difficult to operate. So we need both, but in this specific article they mentioned coconut harvester in India and here there isn't a need for this robot except as learning exercise.
You would do better to come up with innovative new jobs for humans to do. It's easier to come up with a new service jobs than it is new materials to build cranes with
Humans can always invent new forms of labor. Limited only by imagination and opportunity. We should be automating everything we can while actively creating new categories of employment for every person
So many people are assuming there is true thought in OPEX, CAPEX, and employer rights and employer safety in these operations. As others mentioned, Thailand used Monkeys.
There is so much of a disconnect between this crowd and the farmers and the people this robot will actually replace.
What is the average annual income of a farm hand in Thailand, Philippines, or any country that has coconut farms with farm hands?
How about preventative maintenance?
Tariff, taxes and VAT (yeah they're all the same thing.)
"Additionally, while human coconut harvesters were found to work faster, Amaran could work for longer, potentially making up the difference."
It's controlled via a human, so, not really "work" longer, and then to scale up, how many robots do you really need vs available farm hands from the local province?
I don't see it succeeding or replacing farm hands for the reasons above.
I don't think you should interpret the article as saying they have solved automated coconut harvesting. This is a prototype which could eventually be integrated with other components to form a system which, at some point in the future, could replace manual labor.
Of course there are many situations where automation may never make sense. Then again, an automated solution may enable more growing scenarios to be profitable. It is good people are working on things that may not bear fruit for decades.
The ironic part is, literally, it will not bear fruit for decades.
"On fertile soil, a tall coconut palm tree can yield up to 75 fruits per year, but more often yields less than 30. Given proper care and growing conditions, coconut palms produce their first fruit in six to ten years, taking 15 to 20 years to reach peak production."
It still took cars about 40 years to displace most horses from the larger cities. But the sign was on the wall in 1897. Once such labor-saving technology exists, it tends to improve, slowly or faster, to the point that humans or horses cannot really compete anymore.
Good. I hope they lose these kinds of jobs to robots. Human beings shouldn’t be doing this kind of dirty and dangerous jobs.
Once upon a time they used slaves from Africa to pick cotton in the newly formed United States. I often wish I was around to see the mechanical cotton harvester for the first time ever. I KNOW it would have taken my breath away.
Consider this..there are 8 billion people in the world. Growing and doing manual labour for food, fodder, fuel and fiber is unimaginable and should be unimaginable...and we should strive to make all those jobs obsolete.
New jobs can be created. Once upon a time before automobiles there were workers who picked up horse poop and maintained stables. And one day, those jobs disappeared. And new jobs were created. We can’t stop progress. Imagine if the Luddites had won...
> There is so much of a disconnect between this crowd and the farmers and the people this robot will actually replace.
I look at it this way: these machines allow farms to replace workers from one, evidently shrinking pool of semi-skilled labor (farmhands who can and are willing to climb a coconut tree) with workers from a different pool (people who can be trained to operate a remote-controlled robot) that's growing.
This article and the comments here make it seem like coconut harvesters are mostly freelance farmhands, so I could imagine a scenario where you end up with, you know, Uber for coconut harvesting. There's no reason the farms need to really care about the costs associated with owning the machine, when other people can take on that responsibility and compete with one another to offer farmers the lowest cost per coconut.
I'm from Southern India as well. We have four coconut trees in our house, it's as common as having a lawn in U.S. but having coconut trees has economic benefits to us as coconut is part of our daily diet.
The trees are over 25 years, it's taller than a two storey building[1], it's getting harder to find someone who can bring down the coconuts as the article states and also to maintain the trees(debris). Many of our neighbours have removed their trees for the same reasons and we have started to contemplate it as well, but it's hard to think about as these trees are like our family members.
So, naturally I've thought of mechanical devices which could solve this problem, there have been numerous attempts to solve this problem by various institutions and independent inventors incl. use of robotics like in OP; but those without human intervention hasn't made it mainstream and only those devices which help a climber climb fast/safe has seen some success.
Where i come from utility poles used to be (probably still are in fact) made out of wood and the electricians who would need to climb them in order to conduct their work would use special built contraptions attached to their legs.
I'm not sure you're aware, but this video has massively sped up the original recordings. It seems irregularly, too, like humans walking are only sped up about 2x, while the machines themselves more like 4x. Of course they had to cut the sound. I saw some (presumed) original recordings a while ago, and found the machines impressive, there was no need to speed it up.
Drones aren't currently feasible. They don't have good battery life, they can't carry much weight (for a saw or w/e to chop the coconuts off), and precision cutting would be very difficult without propellors eventually clipping something.....then you have an electric saw dropping 30-50ft out of the air which is terrifying.
Tethered power + laser cutting would solve the weight issue and the don't-drop-a-saw issue. Not sure how thick the branches are that need to be severed, though.
But drone solutions seem much more efficient, especially given how long it takes to set up the robot featured here (15 mins per tree). This time would undoubtedly be reduced in production units, but variability in trunks will always complicate things. With a drone, it doesn't matter.
A drone-carried laser powerful enough to cut branches that thick seems like a pretty big ask, not to mention the accidents when the laser shoots past the branch! Dropping a drone that heavy would be dangerous whether or not it had a saw blade.
I think you could get the setup down to 30 seconds with parts that clip tightly together, e.g. how folding bikes work. The controls seem like a bigger problem, as automating that for the wide variety of natural trees, conditions, and lighting seems challenging. Having it crawl to the next tree and wrap itself around it to climb would be pretty neat too.
For coconuts, you can't solve just harvesting alone. It need to be harvested right. Coconut trees has a comparable life span to a human. If it is not harvested correctly, which including only picking ripe coconut, cleaning the top etc. The farmer will loose years of investment due to one action.
Sadly this illustrates the current state of Robotics - HARD. This was 3 years with multiple people's lives. The industry as a whole needs to go down the same route as computers did which are common platforms that fit together that get the job done. Sadly there needs to be a behemoth in this space first(1960s IBM) that does all this work that society as a whole then can profit from(Facebook today)
I'd say this reflects how problems in the physical world are hard in general. The robotics industry does have common platforms in the form of robotic arms used in automotive manufacturing. But they take away all the messiness and noise of the physical world by locking humans away and only allowing the arms to manipulate carefully designed prefab components. It's a similar situation in the world of computing because our silicon chips don't make full use of the analog design space. Rather, they stick to digital circuits with clearly defined voltage levels and clocking margins. By not pushing silicon design to its absolute limits and sticking with artificial restrictions that improve reliability, computer programmers don't have to worry about analog voltage drops across the chip and focus only on ones and zeros. Creating this same artificial environment for robots would involve turning the messy world we live in into a factory floor.
These multiple people were professor and their students. The main value for that particular project wasn’t coconuts nor product development, it was education. In that light the project is awesome, pretty sure the students learned tons of valuable things about hardware design debugging and testing, embedded software, coconut farming, and many others.
From product development point of view, I think a team of 3-5 smart and experienced people is likely to deliver better result in a couple of months, given reasonable amount of funding to purchase commercially available components.
I don't know that much about coconuts, but I grew up in an agricultural region of the US. Practically everything than can be easily mechanized has been, or people are working on it. Coconuts are large and hard, so they're much easier to mechanically harvest than something like berries. The big difference is coconuts aren't produced in rich countries where labor is expensive.
> Coconuts are...much easier to mechanically harvest than something like berries. The big difference is coconuts aren't produced in rich countries where labor is expensive.
To harvest berries or olives or apples, something in the vicinity of "put a tarp down and shake the tree really hard" is usually a fairly reliable method. Coconuts don't quite work that way, as anyone who grew up in a place with coconut palms and tropical storms can attest.
Not to mention that they're often 30 feet or more off the ground...
I think only olives are harvested like that. Table (i.e. non-juice) apples are too fragile to knock to the ground. For berries, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt73GOk4JRY. Strawberries are different because they're practically on the ground.
Not to discount your point. Coconuts don't work like any of these.
Yeah, I took a bit of literary license there. My point was that for most crops, the hardest part of mechanical harvesting isn't[1] actually getting the thing off the tree or the bush or the stalk, it's what happens after that. A combine doesn't do its magic at the head, right?
Coconuts are the opposite, and I think it's a more difficult problem than it appears to be.
1. Full disclosure, I'm not a farmer or an engineer, just a guy who has spent some time studying agricultural automation.
Very interesting work! I didn't see any cameras or any obvious sensors, is the robot autonomous or being remote-controlled? I always heard tell-tales about how dangerous it is to harvest coconuts and be near coconut trees. If the device can harvest quick and safely nothing is better.
The similar idea I've been pondering for a few years now is a drone with a laser-scalpel of some sort, paired with a ring shaped net to prevent the coconuts from splitting when they hit the ground. The laser would cut the whole cluster, instead of individual coconuts, for power-consumption's sake, so the net would have to be strong enough to accommodate that. I pondered it with a saw blade at first, but the cluster's stem is not firm enough, making it hard to even saw by hand with a pole saw.
the reason why these coconut jobs pay less is because, the product does not fetch too much. there is stiff competition for the produce to be sold within few days. some posters discussing discrimination have no sense or understanding. the discriminated 'part' was the entire country. I grew up with coconut trees. I do all the hardwork mentioned and would take the coconuts to be sold and would get no more than 1 rupee in the late 80s. people did not have money to pay for coconut. if it costed more they would go without coconut for a couple of weeks.
"As the population increasingly moves towards tech jobs, there's now a shortage of coconut harvesters in India." Is this really true? Is there a shortage of low skilled labor in India?
Fascinating. I didn't know coconut farming was still done so traditionally. I figured they were harvested using machines like an apple shaker or rolling platform.
It is quite interesting to read through the threads here. Most people generalize India in terms of society or income. The south of India is pretty different from the northern part. The state in the video here especially is vastly different in terms of socio-economic structure from the rest. The caste discrimination is almost non-existent in the Southern part of Kerala. In the context, it won't affect your choice of life or jobs available to you. Or won't face any discrimination in day to day life. Thanks to a strong Communist/Marxist political presence.
Coming to the robot/contraption. Growing up in an environment with an average-sized coconut farm. The device is completely useless. The assembly time per tree, even if its 5 minutes, would take 5*200 trees -> 16 hours in just assembly. And this amount of trees get covered in almost 2 days of 6-hour labor in a season by manual labor. Also, coconut harvesting isn't just about plucking the coconuts, but also involves cleaning the top. Picking the right coconut to be plucked etc. In that aspect, the robot would do more harm to the farmer. Though the cost of labor is high, a serious farmer is going to convert a portion of his yield into oil, which gives a decent margin. Also, this won't be the only crop they depend on. My family had a rubber plantation along.
Labour shortage is a real issue and it isn't economically profitable for someone with about 20 trees or so. But this device under the current design solves only one problem, i.e plucking and solves it very badly.
Even in TamilNadu where there is no maoist presence, and strong right wing sentiment, poverty has diminished. poverty was because of denial of education by the british system, that favored the rich.
Are you for real? If this article was about some roboticists in west virginia inventing this, would you say "They still smoke Oxycontin and die of fentanyl left and right, they need to fix their problems first". San Francisco has more than its fair share of human feces that isn't where it belongs and I doubt you'd make the same comment if this was invented there. India has plenty of issues, but that doesn't mean that people there can't freely pursue things like robotics because there are problems.
I'd doubt this will end the exploitation of the slave monkeys that are forced to pick coconuts. They're likely cheaper than a robot. For this reason, I don't buy coconut products from Thailand.
The idea is pretty neat imo. Its a simple mechanism. Over the long term I suspect it may even be cheaper to use the robot cause the robot does not need to be fed or managed. I'm tempted to build one myself as the parts cost doesn't look like it'll exceed $1.5K. The music in the video though...
So depending on the monkey the robot may be cheaper.
Another cost farmers will likely look at is the cost of a monkey handler, which are widespread vs the cost of a specialised employee who can operate a robot. Unfortunately, the monkey handler is likely cheaper.
As far as i know training this monkeys takes time, the robots will do the job right away if you put this in the long term the robots is cheaper than keep a monkey. But of course they should make it simple in the way that a non specialized employee can operate the bot without any problem.
Just out of idle curiousity, are you the sort of person who would describe a pack mule as a slave? Sheep dog? Service animal?
This isn't intended as a 'gotcha', everyone has a line. Given that you're willing to quote PETA without spitting on the ground, I'd infer that you are far into the animal rights, militant vegan camp? Is that fair?
