Live from the apple orchard

In recent weeks, the Centre for Smart Industrial Agriculture has been active on Roland Schmitz-Hübsch’s apple orchards in Bornheim (Cologne) with a robot developed for harvesting. The aim was to test the picking algorithms developed in the laboratory over the past few months under real conditions, with particular emphasis on ensuring that the apples are harvested undamaged and with their stems intact.

Automation is becoming increasingly important in view of the growing shortage of skilled workers and the effects of climate change. In agriculture, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough harvest workers when the crops are ripe. The technology is intended to help close this gap. The technical approach consists of a 6-axis robot from KUKA equipped with a camera and a soft gripper. Vision and path planning algorithms were developed at the WZL Machine Tool Laboratory at RWTH Aachen University to recognise apples and plan collision-free harvesting operations. This is made possible by control hardware from Siemens.

The project is still in its early stages and shows considerable potential. Together with its partners, the technology is being further developed on the basis of the knowledge gained, with the aim of achieving a higher harvest volume in a shorter process time next season.