Robot Picks Ripe Strawberries

So we have a smart rifle that will do all the aiming and targeting on your behalf, and here we are with a smart robot whose sole purpose of existence is to pick up ripe strawberries all day long, without getting exhausted to boot. Agricultural machinery manufacturer Shibuya Seiki and the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization recently teamed up to show off this particular robot that can continue to pick ripe strawberries as the farmers take a nap. In fact, it has been touted that this particular robot will eventually reduce the amount of workload by 67%.

Just how fast does this robot go about its job? Well, it is capable of picking a piece of fruit every eight seconds thanks to the clever implementation of three cameras which will be able to determine just which strawberries are ripe for the taking. Once identified correctly, a mechanized arm will do the job by snipping it and placing said strawberry into the basket. An official of the company behind this robot remarked that it will calculate “the degree of ripeness from the color of the strawberry, which it observes with two digital cameras. It also uses the images from the two cameras to calculate the distance from the target, then approaches the strawberry it is aiming at.”

Does this mean the cost of strawberries will also drop eventually?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Japan