ST Robotics is working on the next generation of robots – hortidaily.com

ST Robotics has been making robot arms for 30 years The company is now developing autonomous robots for crop harvesting, i.e. a robot to harvest asparagus. It is also about to start a project for picking grapes. Both these systems need a vision system that can recognize the asparagus spears or bunches of grapes and harvest them the way a human being would do. This is a completely different approach from farm machines with rotating blades and so on pulled by tractors. Such techniques are unsuitable for delicate crops like asparagus that can only be picked by the human or robot hand.

Another example is the Dogtooth robot that picks strawberries. ST Robotics licensed the R12 robot arm to them to get them started. They are now going on to large-scale production.

A Dogtooth strawberry picking 'team' / Image: ST Robotics

Like ST's Asparacut the Dogtooth robots rely on sophisticated vision with multiple cameras. Dogtooth and others may use GPS. ST's approach is more like a spacecraft (I can't reveal how we do that due to IP confidentiality). It means our robot can navigate down between asparagus beds or rows of vines. The intelligent suspension keeps the robot level.

Source: roboticstomorrow.com

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ST Robotics is working on the next generation of robots - hortidaily.com