Don’t expect to see a robot making its way through an orchard picking fruit anytime soon.
A technology roundtable at the 2022 Citrus Technical Forum discussed some of the developments growers could expect in the coming years.
Of these, automated picking may not be on the horizon.
The panel, made up of participants trained in drones, satellites, autonomous machines and spray technology, included:
While various topics were discussed, including farm connectivity and digital crop visualization, it was the possibility of autonomous and labor-saving fruit picking that prompted comments and questions.
Mr Clifford said he had yet to see a commercially viable system.
FUTURE: Andrew Robson of the University of New England says it may be some time before robotic picking becomes a commercial reality.
He said the grasping and fruit recognition skills were there but not the speed.
He cited New Zealand’s implementation of apple picking robots in the Hawke’s Bay area which operated at only about one-eighth the speed of a human picker.
Mr Robson said he believed some developments were being more embraced, but there were major disincentives.
“Cost is a huge issue; and practicality and trust, that it’s going to get it right,” he said.
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“You need a driver for adoption and the lack of staff or people on the farm right now for us in Australia is a major driver at the moment that could potentially accelerate the acceleration of some of these technologies. “
An element often suggested to improve robotic picking has been the structure of the orchard or the use of trellised trees.
Even progress on this front was not an automatic guarantee that the bots would be seen in the paddocks, according to Mr Clifford.
“If I may, to be brutally honest, with tree architecture in citrus as it is today, I don’t see a self-sustaining picking operation coming anytime soon,” he said.
“Where we see the development of fully trained and mechanically realistic type orchards, that’s not where it’s going to be.”
Responding to this, audience member Steven Falivene, PPP NSW.
STRUCTURE: AME Group’s Cam Clifford says robotic fruit picking was a far cry from using trellis citrus.
Mr Falivene was one of the instigators of the citrus trellis production trial at the NSW DPI Dareton Primary Industries Institute, which was established in Atwood and Hockney navel blocks aged 16 and around 80 cm.
He said that although the trial was slow to set up, there were hopes that the robot pickers would reach the same rate as a human on the lattice block within two years.
Citrus Australia managing director Nathan Hancock expressed concern that many of the prototype pickers he had seen appeared very flimsy and were “not sturdy enough”.
He agreed that self-sustaining commercial harvesting was still a long way off.
He said, however, there could be a place for self-driving vehicles that take on standard tasks such as cutting and spraying, which could reduce labor costs now.
“They may not have reached the holy grail of picking yet,” he said.
Mr Robson said the uptake of autonomous devices in Australian agriculture was still very low.
“It’s not about the gadget, it’s about the app,” he said.
The panel also discussed the growing number of on-farm management software and applications.
Robson wondered if the trend of having multiple sensors monitoring various elements of the farm is driving growers forward.
Mr. Clifford accepted.
“You have data coming in from all angles, but what’s the point? said Mr. Clifford.
Mr. Yichie said developing technology to work in an agricultural environment was never a quick or easy exercise.
“That’s what we love about a challenge. If it was easy, we’d all be accounts,” Yichie said.
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The story Don’t calculate…yet: robotic picking is still a long way off first appeared on Good fruits and vegetables.
