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

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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.