One thing that seems to have been lacking in the world of robotics is the ability for delicate, dexterous and most importantly dynamic hand-like manipulation. Over at the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory they are working on exactly that with surprising and somewhat freaky results.

This amazing unit can dribble a ball, use tweezers to pick up a grain of rice, throw a ball into a target and flip a cell phone up in the air and catch it. It can do all of this and do it scary fast.

It uses a 2-dimensional membrane which covers the fingers and provides tactile pressure feedback so the hand can adjust its grip. I can clearly see this as an important step into the getting automation into agriculture.

According to the U.S Apple Association 62 percent of the total cost of apple production is from labor. If these robotic hands were made to track and harvest apples this would mean a significant cost savings to apple growers. Robots don’t need to rest and can do things very fast with a high degree of accuracy. Combine this feat of engineering with the work NLP is doing with Vegetable Harvesting Systems building intelligent harvesting robots and you could have a completely unmanned farm working 24/7.

This is something I would think any food industry consisting of manual harvesting should be investing in especially with their shrinking labor resources.