Study tests Monash University’s robotic harvesting arm attached to Agriculture Victoria’s mobile harvesting platform on pear harvesting
A Hort Innovation-funded project is looking into the use of robotic harvesting arms as a cost and labour-saving measure for Australia’s apple and pear industry.
The Pips 4 Profit’s pear production systems for future climates project is funded by the Hort Innovation apple and pear research and development levy, contributions from the Australian government, and co-investment from Agriculture Victoria. It is investigating the feasibility and profitability of automating the detection and picking process with robots.
According to industry body Apple and Pear Australia (Apal) the study will test Monash University’s robotic harvesting arm, attached to Agriculture Victoria’s mobile harvesting platform on pears in the experimental orchard at Tatura SmartFarm
The study will include a lifetime costing model to compare the costs of the robotic arm versus hand harvesting on the picking platform.
The analysis will take into account the three categories of costs for farm machinery: annual ownership costs (fixed costs which occur regardless of whether the machine is used), operating costs (variable costs that are proportional to its use), and timeliness costs (costs associated with failure to perform an operation in a timely manner).
Key considerations such as the initial capital invested, annual usage, crop load and robotic design parameters – like picking rate – will be varied to determine when the robotic harvesting arm would break even compared to hand picking.
Apal acknowledged that timeliness costs are hard to quantify, and the picking rate of the robotic arm may be such that multiple mobile platforms with multiple picking arms are required to get a crop off in a timely manner.
