WP5 Robot Picks Peppers

I don’t know about you, but I somehow would love to have a tongue twister made out of the WP5 Robot that picks peppers. Automation in farming is not exactly in an advanced stage at the moment, since humans with years of experience on the field do a whole lot better than visual recognition systems alone when it comes to picking fruit and vegetables that are ripe and ready to be consumed. Perhaps the WP5 robot might be the first step in the right direction.

Cheap sensors and improving machine vision algorithms could see upcoming robots work better in terms of harvesting crops, and the same applies to the WP5 robotic pepper picker. The WP5 robot goes about picking peppers in a greenhouse via its robotic arm that comes equipped with a rubber gripper, a pair of cameras, not to mention another pair of clippers. The arm itself remains attached to a moving apparatus which will include lighting, while there is also a compressor for the pneumatics, control electronics, sensors, and a computer that drives the entire shebang.

So far, the entire system was tested in April earlier this year in a commercial greenhouse, and results were encouraging as the WP5 was capable of autonomously harvesting ripe fruit. Still, humans are better suited for the job due to cost constraints as well as efficiency – for now, at least.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Robot