Coming Soon — Cyborg Farmers

palegray.net writes Robots.net covers an article about robotic exoskeletons for Japanese farmers. These exoskeletons would provide increased strength and support for manual labor intensive tasks. More information can also be found at robots-dreams.com. 'The robotic suit relies on ultrasonic motors along with various sensors and wireless networking gear. [...] The mass-produced version of the suit is expected to weigh in at 8 kilograms and cost about 200,000 yen.'"

¥200,000 = $1834.55

[r_jensen11]

Something about this sounds fishy.... I find it hard to believe that it would cost less than $2,000 to turn in to RoboCop.

Re:BS

[palegray.net]

The Chinese were using rockets for celebrations long before they thought to fire them at each other in wartime.

Rice-planters Better Than Rice Lifters

[writerjosh]

While this suit is totally cool, I think bigger, mass-production robots like this rice-planting robot [web-japan.org] are far more practical. The robot suit is indeed a technological breakthrough, but I think robots that can help more than one person at a time are far more valuable. Or, check out these weed-killers [primidi.com].

A sad testiment to Japan's birth rate.

[Cathoderoytube]

This is a sure sign things are getting bad in Japan. Back in the day farmers would just have a bunch of children and they'd help out on the farm. So now instead of rutting their wives and getting some help the old fashioned way Farmers have to turn to cyborg technology.

It's all well and good for the current generation but who'll tend the fields when the Cyborg's dead and buried?

Re:Tractors

[Hatta]

Try picking strawberries with a tractor. There's a lot of hand-picked produce out there still, and that's quite literally back breaking labor. Some sort of mechanical support could make farming a whole lot more humane. Of course in our economy, we have illegal immigrants to pick our fruit and nobody cares about their knees anyway.