Page 53 - Packaging News Mar-Apr 2020

March-April 2020 | www.packagingnews.com.au
| AUTOMATION & ROBOTICS 53
vision and manipulation techniques to identify and harvest capsicums.
Harvesting labour in Australia ranges from 20-40 per cent of opera- tional farming costs and this com- bined with a shortage of skilled labour can result in some of the crops not being harvested.
In recent trails, Harvey used images from a camera-in-hand sys- tem to locate the fruit. A motion- planning algorithm was used to command a novel multi-mode har- vesting tool to detach the fruit. Results show a success rate of 76.5 per cent – a significant improvement when compared to the state-of-the- art, which achieved 33 per cent in a similar scenario. Harvey also achieved an average pick time of 20 seconds for this field trial compared to 106 seconds by its predecessor.
This year, QUT will further develop Harvey as part of its involvement in
Cobots... can work alongside workers and form part of your factory process.”
the new Future of Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre backed by $35m in Australian government funding over 10 years, and $149.6m in cash and in-kind funds from more than 50 participants.
ACCESSIBLE COBOTS
According to Adams, UR has recently begun to offer a financial services
leasing programme for the robots, which could prove to be a lifeline for producers who are rebuilding their business.
“We are levelling the playing field by enabling all manufacturers to immediately put cobots to work without an upfront capital invest- ment. UR Financial Services offers a fast, low-risk and financially friendly model to accelerate automa- tion. The partnership makes it easy to upgrade existing cobots, add addi- tional units or test cobots for the first time – and equips users to maximise productivity, quality and profitabil- ity, without increasing costs or cash outlay,” Adams says.
Adams believes the time has come to think more laterally about agri- culture, and that robotics is the revo- lutionary new technology that can change the way we think about pro- ducing and packaging food. ■