The Raspberry Robot
Raspberries are one of those fruits that can be hard to pick properly, as they are extremely tender and easily damaged.
Which makes it all the more surprising to hear an AI-powered robot has been developed specifically to pick raspberries. Developed by Fieldwork Robotics in the UK, the berrypicking bot is still very slow, but the developers say it can still pick 25,000 berries in a 20-hour day, compared to 15,000 for the average human in an eight hour day.
The Raspberry Robot cost £700,000 to develop but the designers believe it represents the future of berry picking.
The robot has gone on trial in the UK, as the farming industry battles rising labour costs and Brexit-related shortages of seasonal workers. The numbers of seasonal workers from eastern Europe have diminished, partly due to Brexit fears but also because Romania and Poland’s surging economies have persuaded their own workers to remain in their home countries.
Guided by sensors and 3D cameras, the robot’s gripper arm chooses ripe fruit using ‘machine learning’, a form of Artificial Intelligence. Working in a greenhouse environment, the robot takes an average of 10 seconds to find, pick, and drop a berry in a tray, where the fruit is then sorted.
