MENLO PARK, CA – With a gentle pluck here and a speedy suction there, this latest robotics innovation is looking to streamline the apple industry by removing ripe fruit from trees at the stunning rate of one apple per second.
Easily manipulating its arm-like body around the branches of trees, Dan Steere, CEO and Co-Founder of creating startup Abundant Robotics, told Tech Crunch that the automated machines were designed to be able to remove fruit with lightning speed and ease, while still maintaining the delicate requirements of the fruit.
“Seeing fruit and picking it without damaging it is the big engineering challenge. If you bruise or cut the fruit it loses its value,” stated Steere.
The robots use computer vision to view and mark apples on a branch that are ready to be harvested. Then, using a retractable vacuum, the yet nameless robot uses a vacuum to gently remove the apples from the tree. Abundant Robotics stated that the robots are powered by plugging into small tractors which are already widely used by fruit farmers. To see the robots in action, view the video below.
Responsible for bringing the ag robots to apple orchards, SRI Ventures, a development arm of SRI International, recently invested in Abundant Robotics Inc. to allow it to spin off and bring these robots to life. SRI Ventures stated that most of the intellectual property of the project was created at SRI, supplemented by a partnership with the robotics lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
“You direct this robot to go someplace, see and pick an apple, and go again. It’s a very non-trivial engineering challenge,” said SRI Ventures President Manish Kothari. “To detect apples very precisely you have to see down at the millimeter level in real time. That requires software, and on the hardware side, chips that allow you to do real time image processing on the fly.”
Kothari also stated that this apple-sucking robot only became a reality recently, due to recent technological breakthroughs in computer vision and image processing. To see more footage of how the robots work, watch the video below.
Abundant Robotics was founded by Steere and the company's other partners a year ago, after recognizing the sizeable market opportunities in agriculture, particularly that of the apple segment.
Abundant Robotics plans to have its robotic pickers in orchards within the next two years, in addition to expanding the company’s 8-person team even further. The company has already completed field trials with Washington and Australian orchards, with plans to conduct more.
TechCrunch reported that Abundant Robotics did not disclose how much funding it has raised, but Kothari and Steere both confirmed that the company has closed an equity seed round in addition to grant funding.
Will the industry soon see a pair of robotic arms to pair with its human pickers in the orchard? AndNowUKnow will keep you updated as the news ripens.
