BGU Develops a Pepper Harvesting Robot
BGU Develops a Pepper Harvesting Robot
February 18, 2015
Desert & Water Research, Robotics & High-Tech
Vision Systems Design – BGU is part of an international team of researchers that have joined forces to develop the “SWEEPER” (Sweet Pepper Harvesting Robot). The project is coordinated by Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands.
BGU’s pepper-picking robot funded through CROPS
The project involves partners from Israel, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. The group consists of research and academic organizations that include BGU, a system integrator and a sweet pepper grower.
These collaborators provide expertise in horticultural engineering, machine vision, robotics, sensing, control, intelligent systems, system integration, software architecture, and greenhouse crop management.
SWEEPER team members look to build upon a previous robot that harvested sweet peppers, which was developed as part of a BGU-European project called Clever Robots for Crops (CROPS).
The CROPS robot consisted of a carrier platform that held a robot arm that gripped and cut the peppers, a compressor for pneumatics, control electronics, an illumination rig, and computers and sensors for fruit and obstacle detection.
With SWEEPER, the team is looking to improve upon this project and advance the competitiveness of the European greenhouse sector, which currently faces a low availability of skilled workers.
Read more on the Vision Systems Design website >>
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