Automating Soft Fruit Picking: Can Robots Help?
by Dr Stephen Redmond and Dr David Cordova Bulens (UCD School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and Dr David McKeown (UCD School of Materials and Manufacturing Engineering)
The global agricultural industry faces a critical challenge in finding enough workers to harvest fruit and vegetables. Labour shortages are especially problematic for soft fruit growers, with labour costs representing a significant portion of their expenses. The situation is further complicated by the reliance on temporary migrant workers, who can experience difficult working conditions.
Automating fruit picking using robotic technologies presents a potential solution to these issues. However, several technical hurdles make this a difficult task, including: detecting when the fruit is ripe; handling the fruit without bruising it; and operating with sufficient speed and reliability to be accepted by growers as a worthwhile investment.
As part of SFI National Challenge Fund Future Digital Challenge programme, our research group at the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics at UCD recently explored the feasibility of using tactile sensors to improve the dexterity of robotic grippers. Our novel tactile sensor arrays use optical methods to feel the forces applied by the robot finger to the fruit (see Figure 2). This sense of touch can be helpful to avoid damaging the fruit by gripping too tightly, and we believe can help establish the grasp when the view of the fruit is obscured by the robot arm and gripper.
Our conclusions are that tactile sensation may help robotic soft fruit harvesters achieve the reliability and speed required for widespread adoption by growers. However, further innovation is required in the design of dexterous robotic grippers/hands and of intelligent control systems to take full advantage of the touch information that these sensors collect.
If successful, this technology has the potential to revolutionise soft fruit harvesting, addressing labour challenges, improving working conditions in the agricultural industry, and reducing the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables for the consumer.
