Posted on 08/23/22
| News Source: i24
It is estimated that there will be five million missing fruit pickers worldwide by 2050
An Israeli startup hopes to save farmers billions of dollars and address the global shortage of farm workers with their flying autonomous robots (FARs) that pick fruit.
The robotic pickers, built by Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, can work all day, every day during the harvesting season.
Each FAR is equipped with advanced artificial intelligence, sensors, and cameras that allow it to determine whether a particular fruit is ready for picking, the best way to pick the fruit with its one-meter-long arm, and whether the fruit is marketable or not.
“We collect all the information, do data fusion on the video, then… calculate what is a fruit, what’s the best trajectory to access it, should we pick the fruit by rotating it clockwise or counterclockwise,” Tevel CEO Yaniv Maor told ISRAEL21c.