ScaleForImpact: Enabling robots to have a real impact on the soft fruit industry

季节性移民劳动力的不确定性使英国原本充满活力的新鲜农产品和软水果生产面临前所未有的压力。英国退欧和COVID-19的直接影响已经并正在限制每年前往英国收获超过10亿英镑水果和蔬菜的69，000名季节性移民工人的供应。机器人和自动化技术提供了一个永久性的解决方案，可以使该行业摆脱对劳动力的依赖，同时也为英国机器人行业创造了高技能就业机会和增长。然而，关键的挑战仍然是开发机器人技术，可以以这样一种方式扩展，它将对行业产生重大影响。这将需要在未来几年内部署数千台机器人来执行各种任务，如采摘，植物保护，检查等。目前，没有一家农业机器人公司能够以未来几年内对该行业产生重大影响的速度扩大其机器人部署。机器人已经通过提供喷雾，机械和精确除草，紫外线处理和许多其他服务作为商业服务的种植者。在全球开放领域以商业规模运行的机器人数量非常少（目前预计不会超过几千个）。在我们能够在全球范围内扩大这一规模之前，需要一些非常具体的技术进步和业务变革。该项目将开发基础和支撑技术，使我们从部署几个机器人到选定的种植者，到2024年，我们将部署数百个机器人在英国更大范围内提供商业服务。这是农业机器人在软水果生产中全面大规模部署的最后一步。虽然之前的项目已经开发了支持佐贺机器人公司目前向商业客户提供小规模（约30台机器人）服务的技术，但该项目将专注于开发在英国扩大农业机器人规模所需的基础技术。已确定的技术差距涉及在开放领域有效和具有成本效益地部署和操作机器人，而无需人类持续监督。

Uncertainty over access to seasonal migrant labour is placing the otherwise vibrant UK fresh produce and soft fruit production under unprecedented pressure. The immediate impacts of Brexit and COVID-19 have and are restricting availability to the 69,000 seasonal migrant workers who travel to the UK each year to harvest over £1bn of fruit and vegetables. Robotics and automation technology offers a permanent solution that can disconnect the sector from its labour dependency, whilst also creating high skilled jobs and growth for the UK robotics sector. However, critical challenges remain to develop robotic technology that can be scaled in such a way that it will have a significant impact on the industry. This will require thousands of robots to be deployed over the next few years to perform a wide variety of tasks such as picking, plant protection, inspection, etc. Currently, no agricultural robotics companies are able to scale their robot deployment at a speed that will have a significant impact on the industry within the next couple of years.Robots have proven their potential in agriculture by delivering spraying, mechanical and precision weeding, UV treatment and many other services as a commercial service to growers. The number of robots operating at a commercial scale in open fields globally is very low (not currently anticipated to be more than a few thousand). There is a need for a few very specific technological advances and operational changes before we are in a position to scale this globally. This project will develop the fundamental and underpinning technology that will take us from deploying a few robots to selected growers to a position where we deploy hundreds of robots delivering commercial services at a wider scale across the UK by 2024\.Our project synthesises and demonstrates the outputs of multiple Innovate UK funded research and innovation projects. It represents the last step towards full large-scale deployment of agricultural robots in soft fruit production. While previous projects have developed technology that underpin the services that Saga Robotics are currently providing to commercial customers today at a small scale (~30 robots), this project will focus on developing fundamental technology needed to scale agricultural robots in the UK. The identified technological gaps are related to efficient and cost-effective deployment and operation of robots in the open field without the need for constant supervision by humans.