Features
You really want to build machines that are very fast, so a machine can replace 10 people, not just one. — STAVROS VOUGIOUKAS
viewpoints, the robot is able to see more fruit. Another approach being taken by Carnegie Mellon is blowing streams of air in a targeted, coordinated fashion to agitate the canopy and in- crease the visibility of fruit obscured by leaves. The other big goal of the project is to increase the speed of harvesting. “If you build a robot that costs half a million dollars and can pick one fruit per 1.5 seconds, that’s a problem because it’s just one ma- chine replacing one person,” says Vougioukas. “You really want to build machines that are very fast, so a machine can replace 10 people, not just one.”
ing weeds, pruning, spraying and pollinating, among other tasks. “Instead of having to car- pet-bomb a field to get rid of weeds, some companies are now building robots that move over the crop, find the individual weeds and only spray over those weeds, reducing chemical usage by a factor of maybe 90%,” explains Vougioukas. The second major advantage such technologies offer is helping with farm labor problems by either replacing people in some tasks or by making it faster and easier for people to harvest.
This, says Vougioukas, has the advantage of making operations more efficient and less labor-intensive. “Rather than looking at these robots as evil machines that will take jobs away, the reality is there are no agricultural robots now that will harvest 100% of the crop,” he notes. Although some harvesting robots are already in operation for produce such as apples, strawberries and kiwifruit, people are still required in the fields to pick fruit missed by automated solutions, and in packinghouses. “These machines help people become faster, saf- er and more efficient when they harvest rather than replace them,” says Vougioukas. “And the farm labor problem isn’t just in the United States — it’s in Asia, Europe, Australia — even Latin America has issues. Not because they don’t have enough young people, but because they don’t have enough people to go and work in those fields.” A further advantage is that robots are able to deliver information about each and every plant in unprecedented detail, including examining how fast they are growing week-to-week and how many pieces of fruit are being produced by each plant. “This kind of data can really help us optimize the management of the crop and production, so the technology has even more potential going forward,” notes Vougioukas. As the produce industry undergoes increasing levels of automation, the role of agricultural robots stands out as a beacon of hope amid the continual worsening of farmworker shortages. These aren’t just machines doing the heavy lift- ing; they’re at the heart of a farming revolution.
To achieve that, Vougioukas says additional arms are necessary, whether that be five or 10. Of course, he says, then you have the challenge of being able to control them to maintain an optimal load balance, while at the same time being able to move the machine faster and pick more quickly. “How to achieve that is not a trivial problem,” Vougioukas says. “The complexity is high, and you need to be able to solve the mathematical problem in real time. So, in this project, we are building a physical prototype of a robot with multiple arms and developing software that can control those arms and achieve speeds that are pretty high.” With another 12 months to run, Professor Vougioukas anticipates that the UC Davis team will be able to demonstrate that the prototype is capable of picking much faster than existing machines. “This is a proto- type that will show proof of concept and can be then taken by a company and incorporated into an actual picking machine,” he says. Future Potential So, where does this leave us? “Agricultural robots enable us to implement high precision farming, which means we can use them to do the right thing in the right place at the right time, in the right way and at the right amount,” says Vougioukas. Such robots can range from specialized harvesting robots de- signed for a single purpose to solutions capable of remov-
Vision Magazine 43
October/November 2023
Powered by FlippingBook