Aneesh Chauhan, expert leader of the Computer Vision and Robotics group at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research and a member of the Agro Food Robotics team; He says that performing these time-consuming, tedious and repetitive tasks by robots will save companies a lot of time and money.
Wageningen Agro Food Robotics started the project of autonomous robots for agri-food processing in 2019. This four-year initiative aims to develop intelligent robots that will classify different types of fruit and vegetables and sort the same types according to size, shape and other criteria.
Wageningen robots are equipped with cameras that capture the movements of a skilled human being who picks and sorts fruit and vegetables. Robots that recognize human activities also contain data about the processed object. Built-in computer insights and deep learning functions allow robots to capture information and learn new tasks.
Successful experiments have been carried out with robots, such as picking and sorting different sized tangerines, separating ripe bananas from unripe bananas, sorting intact and damaged cucumbers, and sorting mixed fruits of different types.
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The first demo of the robots in agri-food applications will be available in summer 2021 . Pointing out that such innovations in robotics and machine learning technologies require extensive knowledge of product physiology and food processing as well as technological expertise, Aneesh Chauhan underlines that these details are available at Wageninge.
The next step will be to test the robots in a factory or pilot plant, making the sweetness, juiciness and firmness of fruits and vegetables smarter with more advanced sensors. Chauhan; “If people can see robots as co-workers or apprentices to train, who knows what the future will be like,” he says.
For example, a robot that can process oranges can process strawberries in the same way, and even sort them according to their sweetness ratios, placing those with higher aroma and sweetness into a higher price category. Even in periods such as pandemics, these classifications and separations in vegetables made with robotic technologies without human touch will provide confidence for the consumer and will enable consumer preferences to shift.