Robotic Fruit Tree Harvester

Project Information

ROBOHARVEST

Grant agreement ID: 954038

DOI

10.3030/954038

Project closed

EC signature date 2 June 2020

Start date 1 July 2020

End date 31 December 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 3 071 255,00

EU contribution

€ 2 149 878,50

Coordinated by

FFROBOTICS LTD
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ROBOHARVEST (Robotic Fruit Tree Harvester)

Reporting period: 2021-07-01 to 2022-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project's overall objective is to achieve – at its end - a fully comprehensive and highly efficient robotic solution to orchard management.
The solution enables sustainable fruit production by empowering growers with management solutions enabled by robotic machines that perform critical operations in the orchard. The key benefits of the system include:
- Sustainable for growers, the supply chain, and consumers
- Empowering growers with data insights and impactful recommendations
- Intelligent robotic machines that deliver quality and value

The solution described above is intended to solve the difficult issues of recurrent annual seasonal recruiting of temporary human labourers (importing workers from other countries, old workers retire and young ones do not want to work in the field), the rising direct and ancillary (housing, food, transportation, insurance) costs of such employment, timely twigs-pruning, bloom- thinning and fruit-picking which are highly dependent on the availability of skilled labour (precise timing for these actions is crucial to the final quality of the fruits), and substantial improvement of grower’s profitability.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Up to the time of this reporting period extensive efforts were directed at improvement of the mechanical/robotic performance, upgrading and optimization of the vision algorithm to reach a high level of recognizing the object (twigs, bloom, fruit best suited for picking). These efforts resulted in a fully robotic machine ready for commercial use in picking fresh fruit (pruning and thinning abilities will be completed to a commercial level in the following development phases), which will be finally tested in Israel this harvesting season.

Despite the effects of Covid-19, FFRobotics continues to approach the EU markets - France, Italy and England, and already established working relationships with a leading manufacturer in France and growers around the region.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Progress can be summarized by the achievement of a fully commercial machine, self-propelled from the beginning of the tree row to its end, capable of automatically picking fresh fruit and conveying the fruit to a bin located on the machine - all done without human touch.

FFRobot Harvesting in Israel 2020

FFRobot During harvesting Israel 2020