Oxbo
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2017–2020
7:09 · 1.1M views · Oct 13, 2014
A promotional video from Oxbo showing its blueberry and raspberry harvesting machines in operation. It demonstrates mechanical berry harvesting at commercial scale.
HN cites it as evidence that commercial berry harvesting is done by mechanical shaking and agitation, in contrast to slow picking robots.
4 comments from Hacker News
I am currently working for a fertilizer company. First off, I have never worked in the Ag industry until a few years ago. It's an interesting business plagued by snake oil salesmen who try to push every whacky idea they can dream up. Our company is very focused on the science of the plants and the soil and have developed products that do some amazing things with plants. We have seen potato fields go without pesticides by using one of our products that uses an extract from another plant. It doesn't kill the bugs, but makes the plants not desirable to the bugs. Plant physiology is still in its infancy. Plants are very much like the human body and so many respects (immune system, nutrient requirements, cell structures, growth needs, disease prevention) and there are so many things we don't know about the plants. For example, plants need zinc to process calcium, yet we don't know why. In terms of technology, 1) our Phosphorous product allows a grower to reduce their phosphorous inputs by 20-50X. Another one of our products allow for water reduction by up 25%. 2) Hyper-spectral imaging is in its infancy but possibly being used to diagnose problems in plants before they are visible with the naked eye. 3) Drones is a big one right now being used for imaging, spot treatments of fertilizers. I can definitely envision a day when they will use these for picking crops. 4) For every crop, there is an inventor who has created a gizmo to make their jobs easier. For the most part, these are
1 = Raspberries outdoor. Camera and two-finger gripper + pull. 2 = Apples outdoor. Camera and three-finger gripper + twist + pull 3 = Strawberries indoor/outdoor. Camera and two-finger gripper + pull. 4 = Blueberries + raspberries outdoor. Multiple general agitator designs + fall. (see this video ) I think the fourth is the only honestly commercially viable option. However, it's never going to work with most fruit, because it relies upon general agitation to disconnect the fruit. Additionally, all of the solutions require neatly cropped rows. Whereas, the promise of robotics is that it will allow intercropping which creates more productive land with a stronger and more natural ecosystem, reducing outlays on pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer and related labour and increasing effective crop density and land use. None of these solutions even touch on these very real opportunities. FWIW, I am personally confident that my R&D team (who normally work on food production and packaging robotics) could produce a functionally superior prototype to the OP video in a matter of weeks, for a fraction of the budget.
I think only olives are harvested like that. Table (i.e. non-juice) apples are too fragile to knock to the ground. For berries, this video . Strawberries are different because they're practically on the ground. Not to discount your point. Coconuts don't work like any of these.
Yes. This is an academic prototype. And it's really, really slow.[1] There are much better robotic fruit pickers.[2][3]. And the commercial ones that do this entirely by mechanical means.[4] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] this video