British start-up strikes deal with Bosch to build robot fruit pickers
It comes amid fears lockdown could worsen fruit-picker shortages across the UK
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Bosch has partnered with a British spin-out Field Robotics to speed up the development of its raspberry-picking robots amid fears future lockdowns could worsen labour shortages in the field.
Fieldwork was spun out of the University of Plymouth and earlier this year raised £298,000 in its first funding round.
Its robot works by using artificial intelligence to identify ripe raspberries and then plucking the fruit from the vine and depositing it in a punnet.
Up until now, the robots have been slower than human pickers, though, and Bosch's expertise should help the start-up reduce the cost of the robots and increase their speed.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there had already been an increasing shortage of labour to pick crops and figures have suggested that harvesters were experiencing a shortfall of between 15pc and 30pc of workers on their sites.
Many of those working in the space in the UK are from other countries in Europe.
Rui Andres, the chief executive of Fieldwork, said the pandemic had worsened the shortage, given it was restricting movement across the continent.
He said: "Before Covid we were having a lot of interest from growers, after Covid this interest is even higher.
"There is a much higher shortage now, so it is roughly at around a 50pc shortage. What we want to do now is speed up development and be on the market as soon as possible, given Covid is here to stay for the foreseeable future."
Fieldwork is expecting its robots to be sold commercially by next year.
The spin-out is not the only company developing technology in this space, and other companies are also making robots to help pick crops.
This summer a consortium which included the National Farmers Union and the University of Lincoln, are trialling systems which can pick strawberries, apples, blueberries, lettuce and broccoli.