Solving farming challenges with robotic fruit harvesters from advanced.farm

How do we feed a growing world

The current world population is estimated at about 7.3 billion. By the year 2050, the UN expects there will be more than 9.3 billion people on Earth. This is a lot of mouths to feed. According to estimates prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), by 2050 we will need to produce 60% more food to feed the world's population.

While the agricultural sector works to achieve higher production targets, are shortages of farm labor has become a global trend. How can the agriculture industry respond to an increased need for food while overcoming labor market challenges?

Innovative companies such as advanced.farm are using technology to address these challenges and change the face of agriculture. Founders Kyle Cobb and Mark Grossman aimed to transform agriculture by using robots.

The challenge - the strawberry market in California

More than 90% of the strawberries produced in the US come from California, strawberries are one of the most valuable crops in the state. However, strawberries are also one of the most labor-intensive crops to produce. For starters, the fruit is harvested every 2-3 days and has a growing season that lasts almost the entire year. Traditional harvesting requires human pickers to find and pick the ripe strawberries close to the ground, often for long periods of time in awkward positions. Not only is it difficult to see the ripe strawberries, but they can easily become fair and damaged during harvesting.

The solution: a robotic fruit harvester

Advanced.farm began their mission by working with local farms to create a robotic fruit harvester. This smart farming technology has three main components. The strawberry data collector scans above and below the strawberry leaves to collect information about the location of the strawberries. The mobile platform at the core of the solution is designed to move through the rows of plants. This mobile platform contains the main control cabinet and supports the picking arm and storage of harvested strawberries and other supplies. The final component is the machine vision camera that provides the necessary data to the arm so it can pick the ripe strawberries.

The OnLogic solution: a ruggedized computer for smart agriculture

Advanced.farm came to OnLogic for a computer system that needed to be able to handle all of their smart agriculture solutions overseeable. The system had to rugged enough to function properly on the machine and also powerful enough to perform all the tasks of the fruit harvester, including:

• Processes of LIDAR sensor data for navigation.
• Control of vehicle navigation via engine controllers
• Managing robot sequencing and startup
• Communicating with the cloud via cellular uplink

Drew Spiropoulos, production manager at advanced.farm said the following: "Not only was OnLogic able to provide us with a robust and stable platform that could meet all of our requirements, but they were extremely responsive to our requests and inventive in finding components in a market full of component shortages."

What is the next step for advanced.farm?

Currently, advanced.farm has several strawberry harvesters in different regions of California. Their machines picked millions of strawberries for sale. They plan to use the building blocks of their solution to develop machines for other labor-intensive crops, starting with apples in August 2022.