New Zealand’s Waikato University is working on robotic technology that may one day end the labour intensive task of harvesting asparagus.
The university has developed a conceptual robot, which is on display at their site at this year’s Fieldays at Mystery Creek that uses sensors to 'read' the asparagus and a robotic arm to pick the vegetable.
New Zealand's asparagus industry has around 50 commercial asparagus growers. The main growing regions are Waikato, Canterbury, South West North Island and Hawke's Bay where it harvested by hand in early summer.
The robot was developed by engineering lecturer Dr Shen Hin Lim and PhD student Matthew Peebles. Lim said they were approached by a Levin-based asparagus grower to create the robot. They then approached Callaghan Innovations for startup funding and started working with Tauranga-based company Robotics Plus to create the machine.
It is powered by a generator and is towed slowly behind a tractor at 0.3 metres per second, using camera sensor technology to 'read' the asparagus stalk, which tells the robot's computer where to go to pick the vegetable. Once picked, it is then transferred to a storage tray.
Lim said commercialisation of the machine was still five to 10 years away and he also hopes to eventually make the robot autonomous, removing the need for a tractor. The robot was field tested last month in California and the robotic arm was running at Fieldays on data it had collected during that test.
Stuff.co.nz explains the machine cannot detect food quality, but Peebles said labour shortages were so dire in the asparagus industry that developing a machine capable of picking the vegetable was more of a priority.
