Most citrus is harvested by hand. Automated methods are needed to ensure the long-term viability and prosperity of the U.S. citrus industry. Past attempts at automated harvesting have largely focused on either bulk removal without extensive sensing and computer control or on robotic methods that remove one or few oranges at a time with a complex manipulator, sensing, and computer control. Neither of these families of techniques has yet found industry-changing commercial success.

Energid is developing a new approach that combines robotic technologies with mass removal. It uses a system of many cameras and disposable picking mechanisms that are integrated and controlled through a computer infrastructure that uses multiple processors and microprocessor cores. We will exchange expensive and breakable hardware with computer processing and software and thereby reduce incremental system cost and maintenance costs to the level of commercial viability.

Would you like Energid to apply this expertise to solve your robotics problem? Please contact us.