Researching the feasibility of enhancing the productivity of daffodil harvesting through the use of a daffodil collection robotic platform (Daffy)

园艺种植蔬菜、水果、观赏植物和花卉供市场使用，传统上为种植者提供小面积土地的高收入，尽管投入成本高于谷物或油菜等传统可耕种作物。然而，自2020年以来，用于园艺的土地总面积下降了15%。英国上议院最近发布的《播种种子》报告指出，能源和化肥成本高、劳动力短缺和劳动力成本高，以及使用低成本进口商品的超市带来的价格压力，都是造成这一现象的原因。我们希望改变这一局面的是一个多功能机器人平台，能够完成使用拖拉机或收割机等简单机械无法自动完成的园艺任务。为了取得商业成功，我们必须首先确定劳动力短缺最严重的任务，种植者获得足够的收入，使他们值得投资于技术。为此，我们已经开发了一台芦笋收割机，并将在未来三年内推出。与种植者的交谈强调，花卉生产，特别是水仙花，也是一个有希望发展能力的领域。在这个项目中，我们将开发一个复杂的机械臂，并将其集成到一个重达45公斤的平台上。这将压实土壤比人类少，无论是这个应用还是其他应用，都是在项目后开发的。人工视觉系统将识别采摘的鲜花，供手臂收集和运输。在项目结束后，我们将扩展人工视觉系统，以识别成熟的采摘花朵。我们将使用可以很容易地适应其他英国常见切花的技术。这对将机器人平台应用于水果和蔬菜采摘也很有用。在技术开发之后，我们将与一家成熟的农业劳务解决方案提供商合作，他们正在建立一个专注于租赁和管理RAAS(机器人即服务)的业务分支。他们有兴趣将我们的平台提供给他们现有的种植者客户群，寻找季节性劳动力。这个项目的成功将降低英国种植者的劳动力成本。这将减少水仙花生产增长的障碍，对种植者来说，水仙花是一个有利可图的出口市场。在发达经济体普遍存在劳动力短缺的情况下，我们希望向荷兰的种植者出口大量机器人，英国目前从荷兰进口大量切花。

Horticulture- growing vegetables, fruit, ornamental plants and flowers for market has traditionally offered growers high incomes from small areas of land, albeit with higher input costs than conventional arable crops like cereals or oilseed rape. However, the total land area used for horticulture has declined by 15% since 2020\. The recent _Sowing the Seeds_ report from the House of Lords identified high energy and fertiliser costs, shortages of labour and high labour costs and price pressure from supermarkets using low-cost imports as reasons for this. Our vision to change this is a multi-functional robotic platform, capable of horticultural tasks that cannot be automated using simple machines like tractors or harvesters.For commercial success, we must first identify tasks where labour shortages are most serious and growers receive enough income to make it worthwhile for them to invest in technology. To that end, we have already developed an asparagus harvester and will launch this in the next three years. Talking to growers highlighted that flower production, specifically daffodils, was also a promising area to develop capabilities. In this project, we will develop a sophisticated robotic arm and integrate this to a platform weighing <45kg. This will compact soil less than a human for both this and other applications, developed post-project. An artificial vision system will recognise picked flowers for the arm to collect and transport. Post project, we will extend the artificial vision system to recognise flowers that are ripe for picking. We will use technology that is easily adaptable to other cut flowers commonly grown in the UK. This will also be useful to apply the robotic platform to fruit and vegetable picking.Beyond technical development, we will be working with an established agricultural labour solution provider who are establishing an arm to their business focused on renting and managing RaaS (Robots-as-a-Service). They are interested in offering our platform for rent to their established customer base of growers seeking seasonal labour.Success in this project will see reduced labour costs for English growers. This will reduce barriers to growth of daffodil production, which is a lucrative export market for growers. With labour shortages common across developed economies, we hope to make significant export sales of robots to growers in the Netherlands, from where the UK currently imports large volumes of cut flowers.