Coventry-based Fanuc UK (
www.fanuc.eu/robots) is supplying robots for a ‘breakthrough’ selective automated broccoli-harvesting system that, in the face of spiralling production costs, has the potential to revolutionise the UK vegetable industry.
The UK grows over 75,000 tonnes of broccoli each year, and commercial growers usually rely on teams of seven people to manually harvest the crops — monotonous work that often takes place in unpleasant working conditions and can lead to repetitive strain injuries, as well as other long-term health conditions.
Moreover, changes to the National Living Wage are set to see manual harvesting costs increase by some 35% by 2021, threatening the competitiveness of UK growers and potentially driving production to low-cost countries.
To help future-proof production for UK broccoli growers, agricultural R&D specialist KMS Projects (
www.kmsprojects.co.uk) had the idea of creating a selective automated harvester that could reduce the need for manual harvesting.
The device will eventually incorporate three Fanuc M20iB six-axis robots (conforming to the IP67 protection standard) mounted on a rig that is driven by a tractor.
Each robot arm will be fitted with a cutting tool and be able to harvest a head of broccoli every three seconds — twice as fast as a manual picker.
Also featured will be a built-in machine vision system that ensures the robots only harvest broccoli heads that meet a pre-determined size.
Another bonus is that the automated rig will be capable of working effectively throughout the night, further boosting productivity.
While the single-arm prototype system is currently tailored to broccoli harvesting, it has the potential to be adapted to automate the harvesting of other brassica and leaf crops such as cabbage and lettuce.
KMS Projects Peter Keeling said: “We have spent the last 10 years developing what we believe to be the first automated selective harvesting rig, with Fanuc a central partner from the initial testing and simulation stages using simple cardboard boxes, right the way through to our single-module pre-production rig in time for the UK’s 2018 broccoli season.
"We will conduct further field trials this year, with a view to building a small number of three-headed rigs in time for commercial use in the 2019 season.”