New thinking
THE NZ FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – April 29, 2019
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Robots harvest apple orchards Robots are taking big strides in their ability to pick fruit without damaging it but it will still be some time before automatic pickers gain scale. Richard Rennie found out about the progress developers are making. manager Gary Wellwood said the company aims to have 80% of its special canopy picked by robots. He expects at least 20% of its canopy grown to fit robotic harvesters within five years. A number of complex technical problems present themselves when developing robotic harvesters. They include identifying fruit ready for harvest and physically manipulating that fruit to pick it without bruising and safely navigating around the orchard’s footprint.
New Zealand is short on people and funds to develop those ideas. Professor Mike Duke Waikato University
Wellwood said the one machine T and G is using this season picks fruit to a standard equal to a human picker and can pick 20 bins a day against a human’s 4.5 bins. “And we anticipate this could increase to 40 bins a day over time.” The machine is not completely autonomous yet but is having modules added to it regularly to make it so. Ultimately, one human could oversee six robots. While welcoming the work T and G has done with its robotic technology, Pipfruit NZ chief
NO HANDS: The Abundant Robotics apple picker in action in Hawke’s Bay.
executive Alan Pollard maintains it will be at least a decade before robotics can make a marked difference to the sector’s labour issues. “You have to have orchards planted and configured for robots. “The industry is re-planting about 8-10% a year in that configuration so it is going to take time.” Last year Tauranga based Robotics Plus received almost $12 million of capital from Japanese company Yamaha to help develop its workhorse autonomous robotic platform, which can be adapted for kiwifruit picking and pollinating. As SunGold fruit have surged in volume to account for almost half the 130 million trays harvested this season, pressure to pick it in a timely fashion has also lifted as labour has become scarcer. But chief executive Steve Saunders said last year the company realised at an early
stage that being kiwifruit-centric is not scalable and it has pivoted to more of a platform approach, capable of operating in grape and apple orchards as well. Some United States grape plantations, for example, can comprise tens of thousands of hectares. Waikato University robotics expert Professor Mike Duke is excited by the developments in the past two years from NZ’s primary sector robotics. They include a robotic platform that measures, sorts and grades logs, the kiwifruit pickers and apple harvesting/sorting automation in both orchards and pack houses. “We are not short on ideas. “However, NZ is short on people and funds to develop those ideas. “It is a similar problem in the US but the US has set up a special taskforce focusing on 12 particular crops to examine ways to use more robotics for harvesting.
“Their labour issues are significant, to the point some food is not on the shelf because it has not been harvested in time.” NZ still has a head start even on the US in terms of the standard of robotics developed here but Duke warns it will only take such a bigger country to allocate a billion dollars and a specific laboratory project to pull ahead. He remains optimistic Waikato University will leverage off its work with Robotics Plus and develop a robotics lab at its new campus in Tauranga. “There is definitely a need for it and a lot of people want it but it does need a champion to make it happen.” He finds it ironic some claim robots will take jobs from people. “Yet everyone we know who needs them needs them because they simply cannot get enough people to do the jobs.”
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May 2019
KEEP AN EYE OUT
The latest Dairy Farmer will hit letterboxes on May 6.
Our On Farm Story this month features Auckland farmer Brian Yates who sharemilks on his parents’ farm where milking robots play a big part. With the season coming to an end, now is a good time to showcase automation and new technology helping farmers farm smarter not harder.
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Incl GST
Diversity in Northland Irrigation a lifeline Research centre fizzles
Day and Night the An Auckland farmer’s robots milk herd round the clock DAIRY FARMER
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May 2019
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S THE new harvest season for some of the country’s highest-value crops continues some orchards are experiencing the quiet efficiency of robotic harvesters at work for the first time as manufacturers hone their machines’ capacity to meet surges in crop volumes. Two firms in recent years have become prominent in the robotic harvesting sector. In Bay of Plenty Robotics Plus has had development staff finetuning an autonomous platform capable of harvesting kiwifruit as a prelude to full commercial production. Their work comes in a climate of severe labour shortages being reported in their respective crops of kiwifruit and apples, with kiwifruit short of 3800 workers in the season’s peak in mid-April. In Hawke’s Bay Turners and Growers Global has partnered up with Abundant Robotics, revealing the companies’ first run at robotic apple harvesters in commercial application. T and G chief operating officer Peter Landon-Lane said automation enables the company to continue to meet demand for its product while facing labour market challenges. “We have been actively driving towards this for the past few years, including preparing our orchards to be robot ready,” he said. A robot-ready orchard has trees in high-density plantings, pruned in a manner developed by T and G to fit the robot’s picking patterns. Since 2017 the company has worked on developing orchards with specific canopy patterns for automation to better fit. T and G global innovation