2
THECOMMERCIAL GREENHOUSEGROWER • MAY 2018
RO"OTS •
Sweet pepper project
The sweet pepper work continueswith a newEuropean
project calledSweeper. Started early 2015 anddue to
end later this year, it involves six partners in four countries
(Belgium, Israel, Netherlands andSweden).
Fundedpartly by theEU’sHorizon 2020 research and
innovationprogramme, this time images from the camera,
which ismounted inside the handof the robotic arm
(supportedon a newly-developedmodular platform), are
analysed in real time toguide the hand topick the fruit.
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pepper harvesting robots onto themarket. Still in the
testingphase, the aim is to automatically pick a fruit
every 6 to 10 seconds.
To achieve this, thousands of pictures need tobe taken
togive the robot learning capabilities of where to ‘look’ for
the fruits. Agreat deal of hardware is alsoneeded,masses
of computer processing speed and cooling.
At the endof theday, it is all about economic feasibility.
“A robot will be expected towork 20 hours aday and
does not need tobe as fast as a humanpicker,” said
Mr Hemming.
We understand the current prototype hasmoved
around a few times, and at the time of writingwas in a
greenhouse inBelgium. TheSweeper will be returned
to theNetherlands this summer, and ademonstration is
beingplanned at the Tuindershoek nursery (partner in the
project). A second event will takeplace inSeptember at
the experimental stationPSKW inBelgium, another of the
project’s partners.
TheSweeper is just one of a number of roboticprojects
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results of the TrimBot 2020project, which has the aimof
automatingbush trimming and rosebushpruning.
Two years into theproject, of which theUniversity of
Edinburgh is the coordinator, the goal is to see if it is
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Still in the testingphase, the aimof theSweeper project is
to automatically pick a fruit every 6 to 10 seconds.
(Picture courtesy ofWUR).
The researchers are currently looking for thebest combination
of lights and cameras.
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