Robots replace farmers organize people to harvest fruit

This robot is expected to address the shortage of workers in the UK.

Fieldwork Robotics, a company at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, has just completed a test of the extremely skillful "farm" of raspberries. If commercialized, this robot could help offset the shortage of fruit picking workers.

According to The Guardian, European seasonal workers, who make up the majority of fruit picking workers in the UK, are increasingly interested in working in European countries like Germany rather than the UK, which This leads to a shortage of workers and rotten fruits due to inadequate harvest. That's why farms are looking forward to robots harvesting like this.

Fieldwork Robotics was established to commercialize this type of robot, initially tested, robots will collect raspberries. This fruit is considered particularly challenging because it is more susceptible to damage than other soft fruits, along with the uneven distribution of fruit on the branches. The idea is that if a robot system can pick raspberries, it will easily adapt to other fruit harvests.

With the experimental robot model, ripe fruit will be detected by the camera system of the robot, then its picking arms reach into the bush, gently take and spit raspberries, drop it into the container and transfer to the fruit next.

A West Sussex farm has signed up to put this harvest robot system in use in August 2018, and initial practical tests are complete. Fieldwork Robotics will now use the collected data to adjust the robots before taking part in more realistic tests later this year, to be ready for the commercial plan by 2020.

Source : Genk