AGROBOT

There are more than 50 different strawberry picking robots, but, so far, no one has reached the break-even point. Strawberries look like the perfect crop for robots. They are labor-intensive, with long harvesting season and, of course, they are delicious. But it seems that there is a glass ceiling for all strawberry picking robots, that prevent them from being commonly used. Anyone could think that strawberries are delicate or that robots are expensive. But robots can pick strawberries by stem, with zero contact with the fruit skin, and they are no longer expensive. I have been working on designing robots for picking strawberries for more than a decade, and the most prominent problems I encounter are the following: ·        Human pickers pick all the strawberries, even the ones that are hiding behind the leaves. A robot cannot pick all the strawberries and any fruit left behind starts rooting, damaging the crop. So that incomplete picking requires people behind the robot to fully harvest the crop. This is labor intensive, as people need to walk the entire farm and move the foliage of every single plant looking for the last remaining fruits. ·        Strawberries are not just dropped into a basket. First, they need to be shorted, and, if needed, discarded. Then, they are carefully placed on the basket, with the calix pointing down. And finally, they are pushed to one side of the basket to open space to fit last strawberry with the proper size, so they are tight and do not move during transport. In most cases, labor will be needed to repack what the robot picked. ·        Robots need to be deployed, refueled/recharged, maintained, serviced and repaired. Those activities require skilled labor, just the kind of labor that is in short supply. Probably those barriers can be broken down with AI, but like self-driving cars, beyond some point it becomes really complicated to achieve any improvement. In conclusion, with the current state of the technology, deploying strawberry picking robots might not save labor, just relocating into a different task and complex the farming operations. This analysis is only valid for strawberries, as each crop is totally different. For example, picking apples, broccoli or cucumbers do not have anything in common. Meanwhile, a good option is the aid harvesters. They reduce the time invested in moving the fruit out of the field, improving crew efficiency by 30%. Our new Aid Harvester even goes beyond by adding technologies to save on operations costs, like solar powered, automated conveyors or autonomous navigation. The video showcase some of the most prominent strawberry picking robots, each one with amazing engineers behind it. Some of them are companies that ceased operations, but others are still working on it:  Advanced Farm, Agrobot, Daily Robotics, Dogtooth, Harvest Croo, IAV, L5, Nanjing Agricultural University, NARO, Neupeak, Noronn, Octinion, Oishii, Organifarms, Tortuga, Traptic and Zordi