Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ROBOHARVEST (Robotic Fruit Tree Harvester)
Période du rapport: 2021-07-01 au 2022-12-31
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.
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.
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.
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 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.