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Unique interplay between knowledge of plants and robotics for innovations in precision fruit cultivation
The Next Fruit 4.0 project involves around 35 partners all working to advance the development of technological solutions for precision fruit cultivation. Key themes for the project include digitalisation, precision crop protection, labour optimisation, robotisation and, above all, profitability.
The project is divided into six work packages:
- Sensing
- Management information
- Robotisation
- Preconditions
- Implementation, economic validation and innovation adoption
- An innovation circle
In practice, this means detecting trees, branches, fruits and blossoms for the purpose of precision crop protection, for example. It also includes the use of sensor technology to detect stress, disease and pests, and to monitor crops and products (both pre-harvest and post-harvest). And it means using grippers for the roboticised pruning and harvesting of pears in particular, and the pruning of redcurrant bushes.
Grippers for robotic pruning and harvesting
Dr Jochen Hemming, senior research associate in computer vision and robotics at WUR’s Vision + Robotics programme, is responsible for the robotisation work package and explains why pears and redcurrants were chosen specifically. “At the global level there’s a relatively strong focus, both scientifically and commercially, on robots for picking apples. But the harvest period in the Netherlands is just six to eight weeks, and in fact more pears than apples are now grown in Benelux. Also, the project is being funded by fruit growers who are members of the NFO, as well as the top sector Horticulture & Propagation Materials, and Dutch industry. So for all those reasons, pears were chosen. As part of the cost minimisation aspect of the project we’re looking at multifunctional applications of robots and grippers, so it makes sense to look at pruning as well as harvesting. A shortage of qualified workers is making it increasingly difficult to perform both those tasks. And because the participating fruit growers include redcurrant growers, the scope was broadened to the pruning of redcurrant bushes. The sensorics – meaning the combination of cameras, sensors and grippers – are very complex for both of those types of pruning, which is why the researchers at The Next Fruit 4.0 are collaborating with researchers at the Digital Orchard programme at OnePlanet.” Hemming is incidentally one of the few researchers within Vision + Robotics focusing specifically on robotic arms and grippers. Most of the other researchers focus mainly on machine vision, artificial intelligence (AI) and spectral image analysis.