Another year, another strawberry harvesting robot.
I've worked on agri projects that looked into the feasibility of this, though we never attempted to pick anything. The reason strawberries are always the fruit of choice is because they're a high value crop. They're also a relatively easy fruit to identify based on colour, and the way they're grown makes them relatively easy to segment against the surrounding foliage.
The main issue is cost. Several projects died in the UK (see http://ict-agri.eu/node/36238) because the end-users i.e. big growers didn't see there being value for money. So no, cheaper is not happening. And this is in a country with Brexit looming and a heavy dependence on season labour; though I don't know if we have a shortage, only that British people don't want to do it.
> The robot rarely hurts the produce. But as of today, one robotic apple-picker costs at least $300,000 — too much for most budgets.
In the UK the money is in high value glasshouse crops like berries and tomatoes. One issue is you would have to design the entire glasshouse to optimise for robotics. Ever tried to drive a robot in a glasshouse? The floor is often bare dirt or covered with polyethene sheeting which gets caught in whatever wheels you choose. Outdoors is another matter. A lot of harvesting robots just rip up everything which is.. one way to do it. Bear in mind that indoor agri is usually fairly automated already, certainly with regard to climate control. Europe, particularly the Netherlands, has this down - absolutely enormous installations.
There are lots of strawberry startups. Agrobot (http://agrobot.com/), a Spanish company, looks the most promising and I think you can actually buy it. Their technique is also very simple and avoids complications with robotic arms. There's also Dogtooth, Octinion, and more..
The strawberries in the agrobot intro video [0] are so orange I'd never eat them, much less buy them. Just from watching the video, I get a sour, dry taste in my mouth. Who'd possibly produce a video like this, when their business is strawberries?
But then again, maybe that's the operating requirements of the system, because they're dropped, not placed in the transport bins. You couldn't drop ripe ones without damaging them.
They are a B2B company. Their clients pick the strawberries like this, so when they get to the supermarket shelves in the other side of Europe they're red.
If you make a robot that can only pick ripe fruit... well, you're up for a nasty surprise.
I've worked on agri projects that looked into the feasibility of this, though we never attempted to pick anything. The reason strawberries are always the fruit of choice is because they're a high value crop. They're also a relatively easy fruit to identify based on colour, and the way they're grown makes them relatively easy to segment against the surrounding foliage.
The main issue is cost. Several projects died in the UK (see http://ict-agri.eu/node/36238) because the end-users i.e. big growers didn't see there being value for money. So no, cheaper is not happening. And this is in a country with Brexit looming and a heavy dependence on season labour; though I don't know if we have a shortage, only that British people don't want to do it.
https://www.southeastfarmer.net/section/fruit/robots-arent-r...
From the article:
> The robot rarely hurts the produce. But as of today, one robotic apple-picker costs at least $300,000 — too much for most budgets.
In the UK the money is in high value glasshouse crops like berries and tomatoes. One issue is you would have to design the entire glasshouse to optimise for robotics. Ever tried to drive a robot in a glasshouse? The floor is often bare dirt or covered with polyethene sheeting which gets caught in whatever wheels you choose. Outdoors is another matter. A lot of harvesting robots just rip up everything which is.. one way to do it. Bear in mind that indoor agri is usually fairly automated already, certainly with regard to climate control. Europe, particularly the Netherlands, has this down - absolutely enormous installations.
There are lots of strawberry startups. Agrobot (http://agrobot.com/), a Spanish company, looks the most promising and I think you can actually buy it. Their technique is also very simple and avoids complications with robotic arms. There's also Dogtooth, Octinion, and more..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43816207 (Harvest CROO is also mentioned)