Autonomous robots to support fruit picking

自主机器人支持水果采摘

• 批准号: 103339
• 金额: $ 122.51万
• 依托单位: SAGA ROBOTICS LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=103339
• 关键词: Autonomous; robots; support; fruit; picking

We estimate that the UK soft fruit sector employs over 35,000 fruit pickers each day. The roles are low skilled and the sector has a high reliance on EU migrants to fill these posts. The impact of Brexit, plus labour inflation through the national living wage legislation poses a serious and direct threat to the whole sector. The need to drive productivity in the sector is urgent. Of the picking costs we estimate that 30% are for the pickers to simply carry picked fruit from within a greenhouse to an on farm logistics hub. We aim to eliminate or dramatically reduce this cost by developing an autonomous robot which can find a picker and transport picked fruit and empty trays around a farm. The robot will be autonomous, have the capacity to map its environment and to find and safely interact with a picker. The key innovation will be the development of autonomous systems which can work safely and over long periods of time in a complex farm environment. The need to drive productivity in the agri-food sector is a global challenge. This project will directly stimulate new markets and supply chains in the production of advanced autonomous systems to support agricultural producers.

我们估计，英国软果行业每天雇佣超过35000名水果采摘工。这些职位的技术含量较低，该行业高度依赖欧盟移民来填补这些职位。英国脱欧的影响，加上国家最低生活工资立法带来的劳动力通胀，对整个行业构成了严重而直接的威胁。迫切需要提高该行业的生产率。在采摘成本中，我们估计有30%是采摘者将采摘的水果从温室内运送到农场物流中心。我们的目标是通过开发一种自动机器人来消除或大幅降低这一成本，这种机器人可以找到采摘者，在农场周围运输采摘的水果和空托盘。机器人将是自主的，有能力绘制其环境地图，找到并安全地与拾取者互动。关键的创新将是自主系统的开发，这种系统可以在复杂的农场环境中安全、长时间地工作。提高农业食品部门的生产力是一项全球性挑战。该项目将直接刺激先进自主系统生产的新市场和供应链，以支持农业生产者。