Augmented Berry Vision (ABV) - Real-time Augmented Display of Spectral Ripeness Cues in Berry Farms

对包括新鲜水果在内的健康产品的需求持续增加。在英国，软水果的购买量现在占所有消费者水果购买量的22%。根据Defra的农业报告，产量继续攀升，2018年英国种植的软水果的市场价值估计为6.7亿英镑，消费者和零售商对英国种植的高品质软水果的需求不断增加，随着零售商青睐英国农产品，这将在英国脱欧后进一步增加。在过去的几十年里，人们做出了巨大的努力来培育具有更好味道和外观的品种，同时投资于改善种植实践，导致产量和质量的提高。然而，在多变和具有挑战性的生长季节中实现一致的成熟度和质量是困难的，并且由于成熟期间颜色的无形变化，采摘后水果成熟度的变化很大。尽管业界已尽最大努力进行采摘，但果篮中仍经常含有未成熟或过熟的果实，对消费者对水果品质的感知造成负面影响。我们将为采摘者开发一款低成本、基于光谱成像的增强现实（AR）原型眼镜设备，可以实时确定并标记果实成熟度，帮助种植者在每一个果篮中生产出成熟度一致的高品质浆果，从而减少整个价值链的浪费。作为概念验证，黑莓将被用作一个范例。英国的黑莓市场每年增长约20%，目前年零售额达到3740万英镑，但由于接近成熟、成熟和过熟的水果之间存在非常细微的颜色差异，采摘者很难确定成熟度。该项目将通过实验室评估水果品质，了解水果品质与成熟度的关系，并利用高光谱成像技术确定一个简单的决定成熟度的光谱指标，并定制一个轻量级的AR框架和LED显示屏，以满足应用和成本要求。通过集成光谱滤波器或快速调谐窄带LED光源，光谱成像将在真实的时间内进行处理，并在LED显示屏上标记单个浆果的成熟度。基于AR技术的采摘眼镜可以扩展到其他软水果，并将对英国软水果行业产生重大影响，作为项目合作伙伴，英国将首先获得该技术，使水果质量、竞争力和经济影响逐步改变。

Demand for healthy products including fresh fruit continues to increase. In the UK soft fruit purchases now account for 22 percent of all consumer fruit purchases. According to Defra's agricultural report, volumes have continued to climb, with the market value of soft fruit grown in the UK worth an estimated at £670 million in 2018\.There is increasing consumer and retailer demand for high-quality UK-grown soft fruits, and this will increase further post-BREXIT as retailers favour British produce. Great efforts have been made in the past decades to breed varieties with better taste and appearance, whilst investments in improving growing practices has led to production and quality gains. However, achieving consistently ripeness and quality across variable and challenging growing seasons is difficult, and there is a large variability of fruit ripeness after picking due to the invisible changes in colour during ripening. Despite the industry's best efforts in picking, punnets often still contain under or over ripe fruit, leading to negative impact on the perception of fruit quality by consumers.We will develop a low-cost, spectral imaging based Augmented Reality (AR) prototype glasses device for pickers that can determine and label the fruit ripeness in real-time and assist growers to produce high quality berries with consistent ripeness in every punnet, leading to reduced waste throughout the value-chain. As a proof of concept, blackberry will be used as an exemplar.The blackberry market in the UK is growing by around 20% year-on-year currently reaching £37.4m in annual retail sales, but determination of ripeness by pickers can be extremely difficult due to the very subtle colour differences between almost-ripe, ripe, and over-ripe fruit. In this project, lab-based fruit quality assessments will be conducted to understand their relationship with ripeness, and hyperspectral imaging will be applied to identify a simple spectral index determining the ripeness.A lightweight AR frame and LED display will be custom-built to satisfy the application and cost requirement. By integrating a spectral filter or fast tuning narrow-band LED light source, spectral imaging will be processed in real time, and the ripeness of individual berries labelled on the LED display.The AR technology based picking glasses can be extended to other soft fruits and will have a large impact on the UK soft fruit industry, which as a project partner will have first access to the technology, making a step-change in consistent fruit quality, competitiveness and so economic impact.