Feasibility study to develop a blueberry harvester

开发蓝莓收割机的可行性研究

• 批准号: 104618
• 金额: $ 13.22万
• 依托单位: BERRY GARDENS LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=104618
• 关键词: Feasibility; study; develop; blueberry; harvester

Ongoing limitations in labour availability, combined with uncertainty of the impact of Brexit, are placing the UK soft fruit industry under unprecedented pressure. The sector needs over 30,000 migrant fruit pickers each year and growers are seeing this labour starting to disappear. This is despite increases in labour rates to attract workers and government assurances that they will work with the industry to help secure future labour availability. Given these issues it is clear that the industry needs to seek new ways to reduce its reliance on manual labour pools. This project therefore seeks to develop an automated machine to pick blueberries. Blueberries are now the second highest soft fruit sold in the UK by value (£337m sale p.a.). It is well suited to the UK climate but despite acreage expansion the UK only produces 7% of the marketable fruit sold in the UK. The market growth has outstripped acreage expansion. The UK expansion has now stopped due to labour uncertainty, in autumn 2017, as no workers could be sourced, up to 20% of the late Scottish crop were simply not picked. To address these concerns, this project is a feasibility study that seeks to develop a novel automated blueberry harvester. This uses pulsed pneumatics to remove fruit and with the air flow controlled by an image analysis system.

劳动力供应的持续限制，加上英国脱欧影响的不确定性，使英国软果行业面临前所未有的压力。该行业每年需要超过3万名移民水果采摘者，而种植者正看到这些劳动力开始消失。尽管提高了劳动力价格以吸引工人，而且政府保证他们将与该行业合作，以确保未来的劳动力供应。考虑到这些问题，很明显，该行业需要寻求新的方法来减少对体力劳动者的依赖。因此，该项目寻求开发一种采摘蓝莓的自动化机器。蓝莓现在是英国销售额第二高的软水果（年销售额3.37亿英镑）。它非常适合英国的气候，但尽管种植面积扩大，英国只生产了7%的可销售水果。市场的增长超过了面积的扩大。由于劳动力的不确定性，英国的扩张现在已经停止，在2017年秋天，由于找不到工人，多达20%的苏格兰晚期作物根本没有被采摘。为了解决这些问题，本项目是一项可行性研究，旨在开发一种新型的自动蓝莓收割机。它使用脉冲气动去除水果，并通过图像分析系统控制气流。