Robotics in Apple Picking

With more of our everyday lives being affected by robotics or electronics, it was only a matter of time until apple picking was looked at to see if it can be done solely by robotics and to remove the human factor from it. In an event held in 2019 Australian and New Zealand farmers watched with bated breath as the world's first commercial harvesting of apples was attempted by nothing else than robotic machinery.

While this happened in Hawkes Bay in New Zealand, it took over 4 years of collaboration with a US-based technology company to develop the robot to a standard athey were happy with.  The robot is able to identify the fruit on the trees by its computer vision, which is able to scan the canopy, it is then able to identify fruit which is suitable for harvesting. And then uses a suction method to extract the fruit of the tree.

For an orchard to be able to utilize the robot, it needs to be set up in a certain way to be able to allow the fruit to be picked easily. In a similar situation, another prototype robot has been trialed in Victoria, Australia, and while it is still early days, Australian fruit growers have been said to be watching these new steps with keen interest, just to see how far robotics can progress.

Although they have seen some good signs of the apple picking capabilities by these robots, it is worth noting that while the signs are promising there is still a lot of ground to make up before humans could be fully replaced by these robotics. For instance, while the robotics seem to work well on flat ground, not all orchards are on flat ground, and if a farmer was to try and use these robotics at their current stage, they would need to do some serious landscaping to their orchards, just to be able to accommodate the robotics.

That isn’t to say that having people working throughout the day and the robotics working the night shift couldn’t work too. But a key point to remember is that for this to happen, while the person wouldn’t be picking any apples, there would still need to be someone there just in case something goes wrong or a bin needs to be moved or picked up.

However, some positive signs for the robotics currently picking apples, is that they seem to be able to pick them off the tree fairly gently. Which is good not just for the developers of these robots, but also the farmer and consumers, as this means the fruit they sell or buy isn't bruised or damaged.

However, while the technology for fully automated apple picking free from human hands is a while off. If you are after mechanical assistance on your orchard, there are still many types of harvester machines that can make your daily apple picking easier and faster. For instance, the Tecnofruit Harvesters are able to have 6 people easily work on it at once. As it provides two different platform levels as well as people loading from ground level. While working both sides of the aisle simultaneously.