A robot that picks ripe
strawberries as the farmer sleeps
was unveiled in Japan, with its developer
saying it could cut workloads by
two-thirds.
The device, which can gather a
piece of fruit every eight
seconds, uses three cameras to
determine which strawberries
are ready to pick before darting
out an arm and snipping them
into its basket.
The two-metre (6ft 6ins) robot
moves on rails between rows of
strawberries, which are usually
grown in elevated planters in
greenhouses in Japan.
“It calculates the degree of
ripeness from the colour of the
strawberry, which it observes
with two digital cameras", said
Mitsutaka Kurita, an official of
Shibuya Seiki which developed
the machine. .
A third camera then takes a
detailed picture of the fruit,
which it uses for the final
calculation before moving in for
the snip.
Strawberry farming is highly
labour-intensive, requiring 70
times the input that growing rice
requires and twice that of
tomatoes and cucumbers, said a
statement from co-developer the
National Agriculture and Food
Research Organisation.
"This robot would harvest two-
thirds of strawberries during the
night when growers are
sleeping," Kurita said.
"The farmer can then pick the
rest of the strawberries that the
robot couldn't get at," he
said.
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