Labour challenges have bitten the horticultural sector particularly hard in the past few years, and University of Waikato engineers have developed a suite of solutions that could provide more options to take the hands out of horticulture.
Mystery Creek Fieldays was the opportunity to showcase the robotic prototypes developed, covering repetitive, labour-intensive tasks in the blueberry, viticulture and general horticultural sectors.
“Labour supply is a common theme throughout the sector and a lot of the technology we have developed is transferable between crops, whether it is apples, grapes or kiwifruit. It often just involves some retraining of the robotics,” said Dr Ben McGuinness of the university’s engineering school.
The prototype grapevine pruner robot has taken a skilled repetitive task and condensed its performance into the action of a robotic arm, complete with pruning attachment enclosed within a self-propelled aluminium chassis driven by electric motors.
“We have had this out for the past two years and have trialled it in Marlborough and this year will be in Hawke’s Bay.”
He said the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning has revolutionised how engineers programme and “teach” such robots, providing either a “rules based” approach or a more humanistic approach to tasks.
He acknowledges the machine remains slower than a skilled vine pruner at this point but has proven its worth as a proof of concept as the project comes to the end of its five-year funding, and starts to seek private investment to advance it to the commercial stage.
“It also offers the basis for a task that is unpopular, conducted in the middle of winter in often cold conditions where the work is required to be done relatively quickly.”
Meantime McGuinness and his team of graduates have also been working on making the life of blueberry harvesters easier with a machine that aids rather than replaces people.
The blueberry shaker and catcher is a handheld human-assist harvest device that shakes the bush’s branches at the right frequency to cause the ripe blueberries to fall into a specially developed catcher.
Developed by Master’s student Alicia Sim, the machine’s smarts are based on the understanding that ripe berries will fall in response to a different frequency of shaking than unripe berries.
McGuinness said blueberries are among the toughest berries to pick given they demand pickers spend time both upright and bent over the bush. Multiple passes have to be made over the same bushes, and demand a delicate berry by berry approach when picking.
Labour costs in the sector have surged by 45% in the past six years, and the handheld device is an accessible tool for smaller operators to reach for when seeking productivity gains.
Typically, because of the tough picking task younger workers are required, and the machine also opens the door to a wider demographic, vital in a constricted labour market.
The engineering school has been engaged in discussion with a local operator keen to oversee a pre-commercial production run of the machine.
Also on show at Mystery Creek was a low-cost navigation system for autonomous vehicles used in orchards, including kiwifruit.
The innovation provides an affordable alternative to more expensive GPS and LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology often used at present. The university system offers a cost-effective set-up that has multiple applications in thinning, grass cutting, pest detection and harvesting.
