Berry-Picking Robots

Octinion's 3D-Printed Robot Picks a Berry Every Three Seconds

Although there are plenty of machines that are involved in the fruit-picking process, for the most part, machines cannot compete with the dexterity and delicate nature of human hands. A Belgian engineering company, Octinion, is set to challenge this notion with the introduction of a strawberry-picking robot. 

The fully autonomous robot boasts an arm that is capable of gently picking berries with speed and accuracy that's comparable to a human picker. Part of the reason the strawberry-picking bot seems so skilled is that is boasts an advanced computer vision system that determines when a strawberry is ripe and ready to be picked. The robot is also capable of determining whether or not a fruit should be picked if it will be damaged in the process.