Farm Robotics to Reduce Labor Cost

Filed in archive Food and Agriculture , Other Biotechnology News on March 24, 2006

Farming and Horticulture is one labor-intensive industry, enough reason for the horticultural arm of the University of Warwick to work on a collection of robots and automated systems that will transform the future farming and horticulture. These robotic and automation products are designed to greatly reduce the labor costs of farmers and growers:

Robotic mushroom picker: the robot uses a charged coupled camera to spot and select only mushrooms of the exact size required for picking achieving levels of accuracy far in excess of human labour.

Inflatable Conveyor Belt: The Warwick Manufacturing Group and Warwick HRI researchers have helped an agricultural machinery company "Aeropick" to develop a revolutionary group of inflatable aids to harvesting which provide huge savings on labour costs.

Robot Grass Cutter: Mowing the lawn is a drudge but for growers, farmers, even golf course owners, with large amounts of grass land it's a massive problem with every tractor requiring a skilled employee to manage such pastures.

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News and Photo Source: [University of Warwick]