Scott Kirsner looks into a nursery that is using robots for jobs typically reserved for low-wage, migrant labor:
Harvest, based in Billerica, is designing a robot for a very specific purpose: toting around potted plants as they grow. In the winter, the plants are clustered together, and in the summer, they’re spread out with about a foot between them. When human workers do the job, they bend over to pick up the pots two at a time; the robots aren’t as fast, and they can only carry one.
But with a battery swap every few hours, the robots can work around the clock — even when overhead sprinklers are watering the plants. Greg Schaan, president of the nursery, can imagine other tasks that the bots might be able to do, such as dropping a few granules of fertilizer into each pot.
“We’re always trying to take our production costs down,” Schaan says, “and we see this as a potential solution.”
The workers at the nursery, he acknowledges, were curious about the bots when they showed up. “There’s some concern there,” he says.
But Grinnell says that one issue growers grapple with is the liability of hiring seasonal workers who aren’t in the the country legally. He mentions that a nearby nursery was temporarily shut down last spring for that reason.
On a similar note, Forbes predicted that the United States manufacturing industry would make a return, but only thanks to advances in robotics.
