{"id":153197,"date":"2022-12-19T11:23:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T17:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/this-mechanical-engineer-is-building-robots-to-harvest-raspberries"},"modified":"2022-12-19T11:23:47","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T17:23:47","slug":"this-mechanical-engineer-is-building-robots-to-harvest-raspberries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/this-mechanical-engineer-is-building-robots-to-harvest-raspberries","title":{"rendered":"This mechanical engineer is building robots to harvest raspberries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/this-mechanical-engineer-is-building-robots-to-harvest-raspberries.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Around 38% of the world\u2019s total landmass is used for agriculture \u2013 yet hunger is worsening, and food security is in crisis, threatened by pressures including climate change, conflict and global recessions.<\/p>\n<p>While there\u2019s no one-stop solution, technology can help to fill some of the gaps. Mechanical engineer Josie Hughes is on a mission to show how robotics can play a role in our everyday lives, particularly when it comes to food. Starting with LEGO robots as a child, the Cambridge graduate now leads the Computational Robot Design &amp; Fabrication Lab (CREATE) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), where she\u2019s one of the youngest researchers to join as a tenure-track assistant professor.<\/p>\n<p>One of her innovations, a raspberry-picking robot powered by artificial intelligence, could help make farming more efficient and cost-effective, and solve labor shortages \u2013 which in the UK alone left <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-08-15\/uk-worker-shortage-leaves-60-million-of-food-to-rot-in-fields?leadSource=uverify%20wall\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a360 million<\/a> ($74 million) worth of fruit and vegetables rotting in fields this summer. CNN spoke with Hughes about her research, and when robots might be harvesting your next meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Around 38% of the world\u2019s total landmass is used for agriculture \u2013 yet hunger is worsening, and food security is in crisis, threatened by pressures including climate change, conflict and global recessions. While there\u2019s no one-stop solution, technology can help to fill some of the gaps. Mechanical engineer Josie Hughes is on a mission to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}