Norfolk fruit farm hosts pioneering robot trials

As reported by Yahoo News, a prototype with Formula One engineering pedigree has been racing around a Norfolk fruit farm in a trial seeking robotic harvest efficiencies.

The small, but strong, remote-controlled vehicle was tested for its potential to fetch and carry berries picked at Place UK in Tunstead, near North Walsham.

It was designed by Silverstone-based engineering firm, Performance Projects, which specializes in hi-tech custom vehicles and works with Formula One and Le Mans motorsport teams.

Technical Director, Terence Goad, said the GoFAR platform – which can be configured for purposes including mobile robotics – is the vehicular part of an agri-tech partnership with the University of Lincoln, which is working on automation and crop-sensing technologies.

The eventual goal is a time-saving autonomous robot which could increase the labor-efficiency of berry production.

"At the moment the GoFAR is just fetching and delivering stuff around the farm, which allows these robotics companies to concentrate on the clever stuff, the AI [artificial intelligence] and crop recognition," Goad said. "When you are picking fruit, there is a trolley with typically four crates on it which you fill with punnets and walk them over to the collection station. That is an appreciable amount of dead time lost.

"The efficiency comes when you have an autonomous machine to do the gophering from the pickers to the picking station. Then everyone is happy – the farmers are more efficient, and the pickers can spend more time picking and get their bonuses."

Pieter van Egmond, Managing Director, Place UK, said the firm is "keen to embrace technology" for time-consuming manual tasks.

"We have got really highly-skilled fruit pickers, so the robot as it stands is not going to replace people, but it will complement the human input," he said.

"There is no skill required to take a tray of fruit from the row to the picking station, so using machines like this could allow people to spend more time doing what they are best at."