Robots To Slash Farm Labour Costs

Robots are on the march again into the last bastion of labour intensive industry - farming and horticulture. Warwick researchers are working on a suite of robots and automated systems which could transform farming and horticulture over the next decade. The researchers from the University of Warwick's horticultural arm, Warwick HRI, and its manufacturing engineering section, Warwick Manufacturing Group, are working on a number of robotics and automation products that will vastly reduce the labour costs of farmers and growers. Those projects include: A 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. The mushroom(s) are then picked by a suction cup on the end of a robotic arm.