FingerVision has developed a robot to automatically harvest leafy greens cultivated in plant factories. At the request of PLANTX Corporation., a company promoting the social implementation of artificial light plant factories, FingerVision has completed the development and installation of a new equipment that utilizes its visual-tactile technology.
Leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, are delicate and vary individually from plant to plant. Therefore, handling the harvesting, grasping, and transferring of these vegetables by robot presents significant technical difficulties. Even in plant factories, where automation and equipment implementation have advanced in many processes, this is said to be one of the most difficult processes to automate. Specifically, the visual-tactile robot automates the work of cutting the lettuce cultivated on plates and transferring it to a conveyor or tray, all while grasping it "gently and without dropping."
By implementing its core technology, the visual-tactile sensor, onto a robot hand and building a system, FingerVision has succeeded in automating the harvesting, grasping, and transferring of leafy greens, which was conventionally difficult. After cutting, even when transferring vertically or horizontally, if the grasp becomes unstable, the system uses the sensation of "slippage" to stabilize the grasping force via feedback control. The robot system, equipped with integrated visual-tactile sensors, achieves this entire series of harvesting, grasping, and transferring tasks with a high success rate.
© FingerVision
Future outlook
The market for plant factories is not limited to Japan. There are also large demands overseas. Due to goals like addressing labor shortages and improving work quality, a strong need for automation exists for each process. Among these processes, harvesting work is particularly difficult to automate. Therefore, the impact of successful automation is significant, and the use of robots can create great added value for the industry and customers.
For more information:
FingerVision
fingervision.jp/
