The rise of automation is touching every single industry. From manufacturing to services, robots are slowly replacing human workers. Agriculture is one such area where robots are being developed to perform some of the most labour intensive jobs. Fruit picking is one of the major tasks in farming that requires immense manual labor but adds very little value. Various companies are now developing fruit picking robots that can efficiently harvest different types of fruits with minimal human supervision.

Advances in Robotics and Machine Vision

For robots to autonomously pick fruits, they need advanced robotic arms, dexterous grippers, and sophisticated machine vision capabilities. Over the past few decades, big leaps have been made in these core technologies that power robotics. Robotic arms have become more lightweight, compact and powerful. Grippers have become delicate enough to carefully hold fruits without crushing them. Most importantly, machine vision has reached a level of maturity where robots can accurately perceive objects in unpredictable outdoor environments. State-of-the-art computer vision algorithms allow robots to detect fruits, determine ripeness, avoid obstacles and navigate orchards with ease. These combined advances now make it technically feasible to automate fruit picking with robots.

Early Prototypes and Field Tests

Encouraged by the growing capabilities of robotics technologies, several startups and large companies started developing some of the earliest prototypes of fruit picking robots in the late 2000s. One of the earliest fruits successfully harvested by robots was grapes. Companies like Harvest Croo, Abundant Robotics, Agrobot etc. built initial grape picking robots and conducted field tests with the help of vineyards. Fruit Picking Robots used robotic arms fitted with pruners or grippers to cut grapes from vines. Initial tests showed promise as robots were able to pick grapes as efficiently as human pickers. Work also started on developing orange picking robots for citrus orchards. Early prototypes from companies like Octinion, Dogtooth Technologies etc. showed robots can discern oranges, carefully remove them from trees without damaging fruit or branches. However, the early prototypes worked at very slow speeds and required improving reliability for commercial use.

Commercialization Progress

Over the last 5 years, the major companies in this space have made significant progress in commercializing their fruit picking robots. Agrobot, the Chilean startup, has deployed multiple grape picking robots on commercial vineyards in California and Chile. Their latest grape picking robot called 'Vineyard Harvester' can detect, pick and detach around 25 pounds of grapes per hour, matching the productivity of 2-3 human pickers. Octinion, the French company, claims their latest orange picking robot called 'HortiBot' can pick 1500 oranges in 8 hours of operation in Spain. Abundant Robotics developed the 'Harvey' raspberry picking robot which uses machine learning enabled computer vision and a multi-jointed soft arm to gently pick 1-2 pounds of raspberries per hour in research trials at USDA's Agricultural Research Station. Dogtooth Technologies is reportedly testing their strawberry picking robot in fields in UK and Europe.

Cost Reduction and Scaling Up

While the commercial fruit picking robots show promise, their high costs currently limit mass adoption by farmers. A single grape picking robot costs upwards of $300,000 currently. For orange or raspberry picking robots, the price range is between $150,000 to $250,000. The major hurdles in reducing costs are the expensive components like robotics arms, cameras, sensors as well as the extensive R&D costs in developing customised harvesting mechanisms. However, as the market for agricultural robots grows, mass production of components at scale is likely to significantly reduce prices over the next 5 years. The other challenge is scaling fruit picking robots from being able to handle 1-2 acres per unit to covering 50-100 acres or more per robot at low costs. Integrating fleets of robots working in coordination will be crucial to improving productivity and lowering per acre harvesting costs.

Benefits of Fruit Picking Robots

If the costs can be brought down significantly and scaling up challenges are addressed, fruit picking robots have the potential to revolutionize agriculture industries globally. Some of the major benefits from adopting fruit picking robots include:

- Labor shortage solution: Manual fruit harvesting relies on migrant labor but their availability is declining in many countries. Robots provide an alternative when labor is limited.

- Increased yields: Robots can harvest round the clock and won't get tired. This enables 24x7 operations and harvesting fruits at the exact times of peak ripeness for maximum yields.

- Food safety: Robotic harvest means no human contact with fruits, reducing risks of contamination. They also don't spread diseases unlike migrant workers.

- Precision harvesting: Robots can select only ripe fruits and leave others to ripen fully. This improves quality and fetch higher prices for farmers.

- Traceability: Monitoring software on robots provides harvest data on exact quantities and locations. This enables full traceability of produce from farm to consumer.

- Sustainability: Robots reduce need for pesticides and herbicides by focusing only on harvesting selectively. This makes agriculture more environmentally friendly.

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