New Robot Developed for Thinning and Pruning Peaches
This robot from Georgia Tech is able to self-navigate through peach orchards, avoiding obstacles. Once at a tree, the robot uses an embedded 3D camera to determine which peaches need to be removed.
Photo by Ai-Ping Hu
More than 130 million pounds of peaches are grown in Georgia per year, placing the state behind only California and neighboring South Carolina among U.S. states, according to USDA.
But cultivating peaches is a complex and manually intensive process that has put a strain on many farms stretched for time and workers. To solve this problem, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has developed an intelligent robot designed to handle the human-based tasks of thinning and pruning peach trees, which could result in significant cost savings for peach growers in Georgia, writes Anna Akins at Growing Produce.
“Most folks are familiar with the harvesting of fruit and picking it up at the market,” says Ai-Ping Hu, a GTRI Senior Research Engineer who is leading the robot design project. “But there’s actually a lot more stuff that gets done before that point in the cultivation cycle.”
By using a lidar (light detection and ranging) remote sensing system — which determines distances by targeting an object with a laser and measuring the amount of time it takes for the laser beam to reflect back — and a highly specialized GPS (global positioning system) technology that measures locations as specific as a fraction of an inch, the robot is able to self-navigate through peach orchards while steering clear of obstacles. Once at a peach tree, the robot uses an embedded 3D camera to determine which peaches need to be removed, and then removes them using a claw-like device, known as an end effector, that is connected to the end of its arm.
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The robot specifically addresses two key components of the peach cultivation cycle: tree pruning and tree thinning.
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