ARTIFICIAL intelligence might not have taken over the horticultural industry just yet, but Sunraysia fruit pickers will soon be facing a new reality in the vineyards and orchards of the region.
That’s because it looks as though the next big thing for our pickers will be training with virtual reality equipment.
The training move will likely be followed by employing robots to move fruit containers and wearing exoskeletons to support physical labour.
It is all on the table and being seriously considered by Australian berry growers to boost labour efficiency.
Delivered through Hort Innovation and led by The Growth Drivers, in consultation with berry growers, the research aimed to identify practical technology-based solutions to address one of the industry’s biggest challenges.
The identified technologies were then developed in consultation with prospective technology providers, before being validated and improved through interactions with growers, including interviews and a dedicated grower workshop.
Hort Innovation chief executive Brett Fifield said the research provided a glimpse of the not-too-distant future.
“There is an increasing demand from horticultural industries to explore and adopt technologies that help solve growers’ biggest challenges,” he said.
“The berry industry has experienced significant growth in both volume and value, but is heavily dependent on hand-picking to meet the demand for fresh fruit.”
The Growth Drivers project lead Ky Snyder said the research demonstrated there were multiple solutions out there for berry growers and the horticulture industry in general.
“The use of virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular in horticulture, providing workers with immersive and engaging training experiences,” he said.
“There is huge potential for the technology to revolutionise fruit picker training by reducing training time significantly, and also facilitating off-season and off-site training.
“Another example are the autonomous collaborative robots that use artificial intelligence to navigate between locations for various in-field tasks such as crop scanning and transportation.
“By eliminating time spent by pickers in transporting picked fruit and for collection of supplies, a potential labour saving of up to 20 per cent across picking crews is possible.”
For more information on the project and its findings, visit sites.google.com/tgd.global/rubuslabouroptimisation/
