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Jul 8, 2019

Robot uses machine learning to harvest lettuce

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI

A vegetable-picking robot that uses machine learning to identify and harvest a commonplace, but challenging, agricultural crop has been developed by engineers.

The ‘Vegebot’, developed by a team at the University of Cambridge, was initially trained to recognise and harvest iceberg lettuce in a lab setting. It has now been successfully tested in a variety of field conditions in cooperation with G’s Growers, a local fruit and vegetable co-operative.

Although the prototype is nowhere near as fast or efficient as a human worker, it demonstrates how the use of robotics in agriculture might be expanded, even for like iceberg lettuce which are particularly challenging to harvest mechanically. The results are published in The Journal of Field Robotics.

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  1. Thank you for posting this. That would be pretty cool to use in my garden in Mesa, AZ. I would need to make it into a field for it to be worth the cost.