A Robo-lution on the Strawberry Field

The path of a strawberry from the tiny seed in the greenhouse to the sweet fruit on the supermarket shelf is long and winding. It involves many steps and a lot of manual labor. Or rather it did. In their approach of revolutionizing strawberry harvesting with robotics Ráječek farm uses two types of robots to make farming strawberries easier and more sustainable:

• The Fravebot Scout for monitoring plant health and ripeness
• The Fravebot Harvestor for picking the fruit

“Dividing work tasks between two robot types is beneficial in many aspects,” explains Vratislav Beneš, the chief constructor at Fravebot. “The Scouts, whose primary task is to monitor plants, move around the greenhouses faster, and if they were to do some other work simultaneously, it would delay them. It is the other way round – working robots work effectively in cases where they drive out only where they are needed.

The Fravebot Harvestor picking fresh fruit

The digital farm

On top of the robots a digital twin environment by NVIDIA is key on the Ráječek farm. It helps develop, simulate, and deploy an AI that is meant to be the robots brain. Thanks to their training using the digital twin of plants and fruits in the NVIDIA Omniverse the robots are able to detect diseases and pests is the real world. The interface between real and digital world comes from Siemens: the Siemens Xcelerator.

As today’s simulation tools can also simulate physical laws (e.g., the weight of strawberries), the robot’s neural networks can be trained in advance without the need to move around the real environment. This approach significantly accelerates the robot development process and reduces costs. “I think that is the main path to follow: not to focus merely on the robotic part but also analytics and the user interface for plant growers,” emphasises Matěj Sklenář from the Sklenář family, who own the Ráječek farm.

Thanks to a technology library robot programming and control is easier than ever eliminating the need to have two programming environments. Which means the combination between the real and the digital worlds is closer and simpler than ever.

Digital technology, real delight.

Smart harvest on the horizon

Robotic farmers offer a wide array of applications. Besides strawberries and tomatoes, robots can be used to grow and harvest other crop plants, but also ornamental plants, mainly of flowers whose appearance and integrity matter most. The only restriction is the need for a greenhouse infrastructure, i.e., tracks on which the robot moves. With the emergence and the proliferation we will see more and more farms make the most of the combination of data, AI, and robotics. Hence laying the foundation for truly smart and sustainable farming.

The team of Siemens, Ráječek farm, and Fravebot revolutionizing the way we harvest 

This article was initially published on SiemensPress.cz