 Robots have arrived at Bill and Carol Shuler's farm near Baroda, Mich., and life has taken a turn for the better. 自从机器人来到比尔和卡罗.舒勒的位于密西根州巴罗达市郊的农场，生活就开始变得更好了。 "It absolutely changes your lifestyle. It gives you a life!" says Bill Shuler. “它们绝对会改变你的生活方式。给你真正的生活！”比尔.舒勒说。 For decades — for the entire time that Bill and Carol have been married, in fact — the Shuler family's routine was practically set in stone: Get up at 3:45 a.m., clean the barn, feed the cows and milk them. 几十年来—事实上，自从比尔和卡罗结婚以来—舒勒家的作息就非常固定：早上3:45起床，打扫牛棚，喂牛，然后挤奶。 Then get breakfast and take care of other work around the farm. 然后吃早餐，再干点别的杂活。 At 3 p.m., go back to the barn to feed and milk the cows again. 下午3点，回到牛棚再次喂牛，挤奶。 "Milking time is kind of like our meal time," says Carol Shuler. “挤奶时间就像我们的用餐时间一样固定，”卡罗.舒勒说。 "We were more likely to be together during milking time than during meal time." “我们在挤奶时间比在用餐时间更容易聚齐。” Those two daily appointments with the cows were the fixed poles of their life; everything else had to be arranged around them. 每天两次与奶牛的约会是他们生活中雷打不动的；其余的事情都要给这件事让路。 There were no weekends off, and no holidays. 周末没有休息，也没有假日。 If there was a big family get-together like a wedding, Bill Shuler says, they'd get there late or leave early. 如果有像婚礼这种家庭大聚会，比尔.舒勒说，他们就只有晚点到或者早点走。 "If you're a small operation and you can't hire help, you're a virtual slave to your farm. You can't get away," he says. “假如你做小本经营，不能雇佣帮手的话，你实际就像是农场的奴隶一般。你无法逃离，”他说。 To make things worse, recent years have been really tough for dairy farmers. 更糟糕的是，近年来对奶农来说日子不好过。 Milk prices have slumped; farmers are eating into any capital they may have accumulated. 奶价暴跌；奶农们只有吃老本儿。 Some are abandoning the only livelihood they know. 有的人甚至放弃了这种他们唯一所知的生计。 Bill and Carol Shuler wondered if their two sons, Billy and Wyatt, would want to stick with the dairy business. 比尔和卡罗.舒勒也想知道他们的两个儿子，比利和怀亚特是否愿意继续经营奶制品生意。 Their grandmother, Shirley Shuler, had her doubts. 他们的祖母，夏利.舒勒，感到非常怀疑。 "You couldn't encourage them, because you know it isn't easy," she says. "You know it isn't easy." 于是舒勒一家决定，为了农场的未来，也为了家庭，是时候搞个大投资了。 Today, there's a big new barn on the farm. 如今，农场上建起了一个新的大牛棚。 Inside it, 100 cows spend their days lounging on sawdust. 里面有一百头奶头整天在锯木屑上闲逛着。 And every once in a while, one of them decides that it's her own personal milking time. 每隔一会，其中一头牛觉得到了自己该被挤奶的时候了。 She strolls down to one end of the barn toward a small, trailer-sized structure. 她就会往牛棚一端漫步，来到一个小小的，拖车一样的结构那里。 She pushes through a metal gate and enters it, walking into a special cow-sized chamber that holds her in place. 她会挤开金属门进去，然后走到一个奶牛大小的小隔间里把她固定好。 A sensor reads her ID tag. 一个传感器会检测她的身份牌。 A carefully measured helping of molasses pellets — cow candy — drops into a box for her to munch on. 一块精心设计的催奶糖块—奶牛糖果—就会掉到小盒子里給她嚼着吃。 And beside her, a robotic arm swings into action, reaching toward her udder. 在她旁边，一只机器手臂会开始运转，到达奶牛的乳房。 Bill Shuler describes the action. 比尔.舒勒这样描述这个过程。 "The first thing it's going to do is, sanitize each teat with an iodine solution," he says. “它首先要做的是，先用碘溶液给每个奶头消毒，”他说。 "Then it will go back and put the milkers on individually." “然后它会收回去，然后分别装好挤奶器。” As the arm maneuvers the equipment into position, I see red lights flash briefly. 当机器手臂将装备安好后，我会看到红灯闪过。 "Those are the lasers," Shuler says. "It has lasers. That's how it finds the teats." “那些是激光器，”舒勒说。“它有激光器。它就是靠激光器找到奶头的位置。” Even with lasers, it usually takes the robot a couple of tries to attach the milkers. 不过即便有了激光器，机器手臂还是得花好几次才能安好挤奶器。 A human would do this much faster. 靠人的话就会做得更快。 Eventually, though, milk flows though hoses into a big storage tank. 不过最终，牛奶会通过软管流入一个大的储蓄仓里面。 One of Bill Shuler's sons is usually here in the barn, but no one has to be, at least not every minute. 比尔.舒勒的一个儿子通常会在牛棚里，不过不来也没事，至少不需要每时每刻都守在这里。 If something goes wrong, they'll get an alert on their phones. 如果出了问题，他们会受到电话警报。 Sometimes, they can fix it by sending instructions to the robot from their phone. 有时候，通过电话给机器人提供指令就可以修好。 They can also see what's happening by checking the video feed from one of 20 cameras set up around the farm. 他们还可以通过查看安装在农场上的20个摄像头中的某一个来看看到底出了什么问题。 Robots like these are milking a small minority of America's cows — a representative from DeLaval, the company that made Schuster's robots, estimates that it's about 5 percent. 像这样的机器人挤奶的奶牛在美国奶牛中算少数的—一个DeLaval公司的代表估计只占5%，舒勒家机器人就是他们家制造的。 But the share is growing. 不过这个份额正在增长。 Big dairies are buying them to replace hired workers, many of them immigrants, because recruiting and keeping those workers is getting much more difficult. 大的牛奶公司正在购入机器人来取代挤奶工，因为挤奶工很多都是移民，而招聘和雇佣这样的工人正变得越来越复杂。 On small dairy farms, though, which were among the first to adopt this technology, the robots are replacing the labor of the families that own those farms. 而在小的挤奶农场上，他们是最早采用这种技术的，那些机器人正接管农场主的家人们的劳作。 Instead of displacing people, Bill Schuler hopes that the robots will help his sons stay right where they are, on the farm. 相比于取代人们，比尔.舒勒希望机器人能够帮忙把儿子们留在牛奶农场上。 "If this technology would have been available 25 or 30 years ago, I'd still have more friends milking cows today," he says. “如果这项技术25或者30年前就出来的话，我的很多朋友至今可能都还会在挤奶呢，”他说。 "I have a friend who's a couple of years older than I am. I'm sure he would have robots. He'd still be milking cows today, and his son would probably be there with him." “我有一个长我几岁的朋友。我保证他可能会买机器人。那样的话如今他就还会在挤奶，他的儿子可能也会在那里陪着他。” In fact, small family-run dairy farms like this are rare enough these days that Schuler is turning his into a tourist attraction. 事实上，像这样小型的家庭经营的奶牛农场如今已经非常少见了，因此舒勒正把它转变成一个旅游景点。 The farm is open for visitors every afternoon. 每天下午农场会对游客开放。 Tours cost $5 per person, and there's ice cream for sale. 参观每人需要花费5美元，还有冰淇淋卖。 Hundreds of people visited last year. 每年都上百人来参观。 Kids love the cows, Schuler says. 孩子们都很喜欢奶牛，舒勒说。 But their parents are amazed by the robots. 不过他们的父母则对机器人感到惊叹。 感谢关注 跟amber一起看世界 |
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