Between the Perseverance Rover's one year anniversary on Mars, new services launching and exciting stories about robots in the field, there was no shortage of things to cover in February. Here are the Top 10 most popular robotics stories on The Robot Report in February 2022. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter to stay updated on the robotics stories you need to know about. When Abundant Robotics, an agricultural robotics company, shut down in mid-2021, it cited a lack of funding and market traction as the two primary challenges. But that didn't scare away product development incubator Wavemaker Labs, which in October 2021 acquired the intellectual property (IP) of Abundant Robotics for an undisclosed amount.

In another sign that smart technology is transforming the farming industry, engineers at the University of Cambridge have developed a robot that uses machine learning to pick lettuce. The robot, dubbed "Vegebot", has been designed to first identify iceberg lettuce and then decide if it is healthy and ready to be picked, the university said Monday. If this is the case, it will then cut the lettuce without damaging it. The Vegebot was first trained to identify and pick the delicate crop in a laboratory and has now undertaken successful tests in a range of field conditions. The university added that while the prototype device was neither as fast or efficient as a human, it showed how robots could be used in agriculture on a wider scale.

A bowl of salad is a beautiful collection of human ingenuity. The lettuce requires its own specialized agricultural process, as do the tomatoes, as do the garbanzo beans. Then comes the simple act of pulling these ingredients out of the ground, a challenge our dextrous human hands complete with ease. This is why roboticists are creating crop-specific machines to harvest fruits and veggies. There's the robot that harvests lettuce with a knife made of water.

Robots are replacing human workers at a faster pace than any other point in history. Most of these robots are in factories, but a new kind of mechanized worker has hit apple orchards. Abundant Robotics in California has built an automated apple picker, that uses a vacuum system to suck the fruit straight off of the trees. "As a kid in Louisiana I was inspired by agricultural equipment such as combines, cotton pickers, and tractors," Abundant Robotics CEO Dan Steere told the Newshour. "The work we're doing is an extension of several hundreds of years of technology innovation for agriculture."

GV (formerly Google Ventures) is leading a $10 million investment in Abundant Robotics, a company building apple-picking robots that could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits. Joining GV in the round were BayWa AG and Tellus partners along with the company's earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. Abundant Robotics Chief Executive and cofounder Dan Steere said his company began working with the apple industry four years ago to figure out how to automate the cumbersome task of picking apples. "It's very difficult to locate fruit that's ready to be picked within a canopy and then retrieve it without turning it into apple sauce," he said. Every fall in the US and in Australia, the company's engineers can be found in different orchards testing their technologies and working alongside farmers to understand what's still needed. The company's robots are designed to work around-the-clock, identifying and picking apples even in the dark of night.

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON – Harvesting Washington state's vast orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, many of whom work illegally in the United States. That could change dramatically; at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. "Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."

Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. "Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."

Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farm-workers, and many of them work illegally in the US. Two of the biggest orchards could soon replace the majority of these workers with robots that don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. But experts have expressed their concerns over the robotic fruit pickers, claiming they will displace valuable members of the Washington community. Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farm-workers, and many of them work illegally in the US FFRobotics is developing a machine that has three-fingered grips to grab fruit and twist or clip it from a branch. The machine would have between four and 12 robotic arms, and can pick up to 10,000 apples an hour, Mr Kober said. One machine would be able to harvest a variety of crops, taking 85 to 90 percent of the crop off the trees, Mr Kober said.

Dan Wheat/Capital Press Joe Davidson, a Washington State University mechanical engineering doctoral student, demonstrates use of a robotic apple picker at a WSU field day in Prosser, Wash., on Sept. 17. Such a device could be a big labor saver for the apple industry. A robot able to pick apples fast enough and gently enough to be economically viable could be a huge boost to the apple industry in labor savings and in meeting labor shortages. Manoj Karkee, associate professor of biological systems engineering at the Washington State University research station in Prosser, and a new company, Abundant Robotics, of Menlo Park, Calif., tested robotic picking in Central Washington orchards last year and again this fall. About a dozen companies around the world and another three to five research groups are working on the robotic harvest of apples, citrus, bell peppers, cucumbers and other fruits and vegetables predominantly picked by hand, Karkee said.

As an apple fan (the delicious fruit, not the horrible-tasting technology company), I take it for granted that apples will be available to me at affordable prices whenever and wherever I want them. This is because I'm a clueless consumer, who has no idea that, in 2012, 4.2 million apples were picked in the United States. Apple picking is a task that seems like it should be easy to automate: the environment is semi-structured and you're dealing with objects that are nearly homogenous. At the same time, though, those nearly homogenous objects are often occluded by leaves and branches, and grasping them quickly enough and delicately enough to compete with humans workers isn't easy. Robot vision and manipulation have recently advanced just enough to start making autonomous apple harvesting a commercial success, and there are few companies (including FFRobotics) already working in the space.