Robotic Fruit Tree Harvester

Projektinformationen

ROBOHARVEST

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 954038

DOI

10.3030/954038

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 2 Juni 2020

Startdatum 1 Juli 2020

Enddatum 31 Dezember 2022

Finanziert unter

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Gesamtkosten

€ 3 071 255,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 2 149 878,50

Koordiniert durch

FFROBOTICS LTD
Israel

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

Berichtszeitraum: 2021-07-01 bis 2022-12-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

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.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

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.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

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