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Robotics in agriculture face complex challenges when it comes to dealing with speciality produce such as fruits and vegetables. Niall Mottram demonstrates an actuator that senses the pressure being applied to grip a fruit and also detects when it's slipping. This allows the actuator to replicate the human ability of gripping a fruit with just enough pressure to pick it but not squash it.
As pressures increase on the food supply chain, the importance of predictable yields increases. Generally, the better informed growers are, the better the price they can potentially obtain. However, manual counts struggle to achieve sufficient accuracy. Although counting fruits or salad is a simple task for a human, it has proven hard to automate.
Indoor farming promises high yield, high quality and locally-grown crops. But despite steadily decreasing operating costs, many crops are still not profitable. So, where are the innovation opportunities to drive down costs...
While automation and robotics have benefited automotive assembly, warehousing, and agritech, beyond some early forays, automation and robotics in construction applications are noticeably scarce.
Vertical farming promises a step change in production density, providing significant efficiency savings with the additional benefit of improved product quality. Vertical farming also presents the only viable option for growing crops within urban environments...