Productising a robotic asparagus picker

在寻找足够的工作人员从事水果和蔬菜采摘、修剪和除草等农业工作方面存在巨大挑战。在许多情况下，这些都是多年生作物，目前的自动化机械会损害植物。芦笋就是一个典型的例子。它从一个根产生多个矛。只有成熟的芦笋才能在地面采摘，采摘时要灵巧，避免损坏植物。几家公司已经生产了自动甚至自主的芦笋收获机。然而，这些依赖于光学传感器，并且不能实现与人类采摘者相同的产量。我们利用InnovateUK的资金开发了一种原型收割机，该收割机使用人工视觉系统来检测所有准备好的芦笋。它使用机械臂和刀在地面上精确切割。我们已经在商业种植者的试验中证明了这一点。在这个项目中，我们将进一步开发这一点，将自主导航系统和自充电功能结合起来，使用太阳能充电器。我们将进行两轮迭代开发，第一年使用三个种植者的田间试验，第二年使用40个种植者，然后进行更大规模的试验后项目。我们还将确定需要哪些支持（零件、更新）来为用户提供完整的自主收割服务，该解决方案将具有成本效益，目标价格为5万英镑，并且将完全自主，能够昼夜工作。对于较小的种植者（年产量<25，000公斤），将有一个租赁选项，以促进最大限度地获得技术，并为种植者节省直接的劳动力成本。对于较大的种植者，我们的目标是投资回收期<4年。

There are great challenges in finding enough staff to do agricultural jobs like fruit and vegetable picking, pruning and weeding. In many cases these are for perennial crops, where current automated machinery would damage plants. Asparagus is a typical example. It produces multiple spears from one root. Only those that are ripe can be picked, at ground level and with dexterity that avoids damaging the plant.Several companies have produced automatic and even autonomous asparagus harvesters. However, these rely on optical sensors and do not achieve the same yields as human pickers. We have used InnovateUK funding to develop a prototype harvester that uses an artificial vision system to detect all asparagus spears that are ready. It uses a robotic arm and knife to cut precisely at ground level. We have proven this in an operational environment, in trials with a commercial grower.In this project we will develop this further, incorporating an autonomous navigation system and self-charging capability, using a solar-powered charger. We will carry out two rounds of iterative development, using field trials with three growers in year one, followed by 40 in year two and a larger trial post-project. We will also identify what support is needed (parts, updates) to offer users a complete autonomous harvest service.The solution will be cost- effective at a target price of £50k and will be fully autonomous and able to work day and night. There will be a rental option for smaller growers (<25,000kg of output per annum), to facilitate maximum access to the technology with immediate labour cost savings for the growers. For larger growers, we are targeting a payback period of <4 years.