Item — HN Reader

Rather that developing robots that fit into existing strawberry farms which are designed to make it easier for humans to harvest, they should be developing new types of strawberry farms which are designed to make it easier for robots to harvest. That could be combined with the indoor farm model too to bring other benefits, such as allowing all-year-round harvests, potentially bringing the food closer to the consumer, possibly assisting pest control, etc.

But yes, I've often thought strawberry harvesting would be a really interesting (and challenging) AI and robotics problem to work on.

1 comments

>existing strawberry farms which are designed to make it easier for humans to harvest //

All the farms I've seen in the UK have just been fields, making harvesting very arduous work (that farms near where I grew up imported Eastern European labourers for).

What's the design you're talking of here?

A large proportion of strawberries are now produced in polytunnels using the matted bed or table top system. The former allows strawberries to be picked from a seated position from a wheeled trolley; the latter raises the strawberries to about chest height. Gross yields can be slightly lower and there's a significant capital cost for table top production, but it can work out cheaper overall due to easier organic pest control, higher quality and reduced husbandry and picking costs. We're likely to see a considerable shift towards table top production as brexit starts to bite.