An autonomous strawberry picking robot that outperforms human fruit picker could herald a revolution in the use of soft-fruit harvesting technology its inventors have claimed.
Developed by Belgian robotics specialist Octinion the so-called ‘Rubion’ robot uses a combination of smart photonics technology and an innovative clasping mechanism to pick up 360kg of strawberries each day. According to the firm this compares to 50kg a day for a productive human picker.
Octinion claims that a fleet of just 14 of the robots would take less than seven days to pick and package all strawberries needed for Wimbledon.
Rubion uses photonic sensors to detect the wavelengths of light, or the ‘signatures’ given off from a ripe, red strawberry according to a pre-programmed set of characteristics the RGB camera has built into the ‘eye’ of the robot.
It then uses a patented soft-touch gripper to pick strawberries from below and sort the fruits by size or weight and pack into punnets as it goes along.
Commenting on the technology Octinion CTO Dr Jan Anthonis said: “Just like you know what a plump, juicy red strawberry looks like, Rubion can do this mathematically, looking for the infrared spectroscopic heat signatures given off from a perfect fruit, getting a perfect ‘hit’ every time.”
While the technology required to harvest and other hard fruits is relatively straightforward the automated picking of soft fruit has traditionally been a much more challenging problem explained Octinion CEO Dr Tom Coen. “[it] has always been tricky given that they are so easy to get squashed and the sensitivity needed to discern whether a fruit was ripe or rotten, simply wasn’t there…our…robot…is a novel way around this problem. It is comparable to a human in many ways: the robot only picks the finest fresh, red berries and will not bruise or hurt the strawberries in any way.”
The development of the robot was supported by ACTPHAST 4.0 an SME ‘incubator’ that helps existing and fledgling businesses with innovation in photonics.
A poor headline. If you want berries suitable for Wimbledon a robotic picker must not be allowed to touch the berry. Desert quality berries need to be harvested by cutting the peduncle and the simple dropping into a punnet avoided if at all possible. We need to look beyond the simple replacement of the current process achieved by migrant labour and look at what extras can be achieved with the same expensive kit. Comparing amounts picked by a robot and a human picker is not enough – a grower needs to look at the economics as well.
If the berry can’t be touched won’t it be irreparably damaged by simply being laid in the punnet, potentially with additional strawberries on top of it? Perhaps the only way to have appropriate strawberries for WImbledon is to have them individually suspended from their stalk for the entire journey from bush to bowl.
I can’t wait to look into the economics of that.
I am more interested in the quality of the fruit, which seems to have deteriorated since supermarkets got involved. All about profit and prolonging the season. But the real issue here is what of the unskilled workers or seasonal workers that are trying to earn some extra money? How do you replace these jobs? Just because we can, does not mean we should.
Octinion would appear to be a direct competitor to Fieldwork Robotics reported on by The Engineer last month … who will be first to market? The strawberries appear from the photo to be hydroponically grown and under glass, which is obviously a far less challenging environment for a robot than a muddy field
I sympathise with Mark’s view about the reason for doing this. However, the real potential is in general fruit-picking.
I thought that the crowd at Wimbledon were primarily automatons anyway, so they should be quite happy to pay mega-bucks for robot gathered fruit with a bit of insipid cream.
Yet another way for BIG business to put little people out of the work that they need to live, autonomous trucks, packages delivered by robots, robotic assembly lines etc etc, lots of fat people sitting at home on welfare just what we need.
Yeah, ban self-checkouts, cash machines, tractors, weaving looms, JCBs, pneumatic drills…! That’ll create a lot more demand for manual labour!