Special prize for education: Autonomous apple picker

The challenge

The agricultural industry faces major challenges when harvesting fruit, including

• a shortage of labour: A decline in the agricultural workforce and seasonal fluctuations make it difficult to find reliable labour to harvest fruit on time. This leads to potential crop losses and economic pressures.
• Rising costs: Rising labour costs and market pressures require greater harvesting efficiency to maintain profitability.
• Ergonomic load: Manual fruit harvesting is physically demanding and leads to fatigue and possible injury to workers. Long working hours in difficult conditions can affect the well-being and productivity of workers.
• Consistency and quality: Ensuring consistent picking quality and minimising damage to the fruit during manual harvesting is difficult to achieve with large numbers of workers.
• Sustainability: Automated picking processes contribute to sustainable agriculture by reducing dependence on chemical pesticides and optimising resource use.

The solution

The autonomous fruit picking system developed in this research project addresses these challenges through:

• Increased efficiency: The robot system works tirelessly, harvesting fruit around the clock, maximising yield and minimising the risk of crop loss due to harvesting delays. The even and precise gripping mechanism ensures that the fruit is not damaged, which improves the overall quality.
• Improved working conditions: Automating dangerous and physically demanding tasks improves the safety and well-being of workers and reduces the risk of injury and fatigue.
• Optimised use of skilled labour: Automating the repetitive and strenuous task of fruit picking frees up human labour to focus on higher value tasks such as harvest management, quality control and orchard maintenance.