| Oct 01, 2013 |
Robot can pick strawberries
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(Nanowerk News) A robot that picks ripe strawberries as the farmer sleeps was unveiled recently, with its developer saying it could cut workloads by two-thirds.
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The device, which can gather a piece of fruit every eight seconds, uses three cameras to determine which strawberries are ready to pick before darting out an arm and snipping them into its basket.
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The two-meter-tall robot moves on rails between rows of strawberries, which are usually grown in elevated planters in greenhouses in Japan.
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It “calculates the degree of ripeness from the color of the strawberry, which it observes with two digital cameras”, said Mitsutaka Kurita, an official of Shibuya Seiki which developed the machine.
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“It also uses the images from the two cameras to calculate the distance from the target, then approaches the strawberry it is aiming at,” he said.
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A third camera then takes a detailed picture of the fruit, which it uses for the final calculation before moving in for the snip.
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Strawberry farming is highly labor-intensive, requiring 70 times the input that growing rice requires and twice that of tomatoes and cucumbers, said a statement from co-developer the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization.
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“This robot would harvest two-thirds of strawberries during the night when growers are sleeping,” Kurita said.
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“The farmer can then pick the rest of the strawberries that the robot couldn’t get at,” he said.
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The robot will be on sale early next year for about five million yen.
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Strawberries are available all year round in Japan, where they usually cost at least 500 yen for a small punnet.
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