MARS robot is an apple picker with many advantages

APAL (Apple and Pear Australia Limited) is the national representative of Australia's apple and pear industry with turnover of $600 million, and owner of the Pink Lady brand in more than 100 countries. The company created a unique research project MARS that changes the way harvesting is viewed.

MARS (Monash Apple Retrieving System) is an apple harvesting system developed by Dr Chao Chen from Monash University. The robot was developed as part of a three-year research project to improve orchard efficiency and address the shortage of agricultural workers.

Briefly and to the point:

1. MARS identifies more than 90% of visible apples from a distance of 1.2 m;
2. the robot picks more than 85% of apples within reach of its arm;
3. the gripper adapts to different sizes and shapes of fruit;
4. the robot picks one apple every seven seconds.

The robot works autonomously, recognizing fruit, avoiding obstacles and moving independently along rows of fruit trees during harvest.

MARS consists of three components:

1. A vision system used to identify apples and determine their position.
2. A robotic arm that carries the "hand" to the target apples.
3. A soft robotic "hand" with a suction cup and gripper.

"The arm design provides double protection for the suction part and gripping force. This allows us to significantly increase the percentage of successful picks," said Dr Chao Chen.

Testing in an orchard

MARS was tested at Fankhauser Orchards during the 2021 harvest. During two-week testing periods in February and April, Dr Chen's team had the robot work first with Smitten apples, then with Pink Lady. All of this took place in purpose-built 2D orchards.

“In essence, the robot resembles a vehicle and the orchard resembles a road. The vehicle and the road must meet each other's requirements to function, so in the future both the robot and the orchard will need improvements. And they will change”

Automated labour

Dr Chen's goal is for the robotic system to work alongside people rather than fully replace them in the orchard.

The professor said: "For example, the robot will work better in bad weather (too hot, too cold, too humid) and at night. The robot can pick fruit at heights that may be difficult for humans to reach. As robotics develops and orchards are redesigned, the robot will become more efficient and cheaper, but people will still pick apples that are hard for the robot to reach, in particular those deep in the foliage."

Dr Chen sees potential for robots to evolve to other agricultural tasks, once systems become more advanced and can move more easily through plants and space in structured orchards designed for robots.

Robots with advantages

Beyond the practicality of harvesting, the researcher sees robotic innovations like MARS as a new way to attract young people to orchards through exciting agritech.

“We see a trend of young people preferring to live in big cities because they see more opportunities there, while rural areas and agriculture are seen as something left "behind". Having these robotic systems on a farm can attract young people for various reasons. It gives them the chance to work in design and development using very advanced technology. It also changes the nature of the work on offer: less manual labour, more management”

The doctor sees great potential in MARS for a seasonal labour system. According to him, robots can follow different harvest seasons throughout the year. MARS can start with apple harvesting and, after it ends, move on to citrus. Then the robots follow stone fruits, after which they return to apples.

The whole research team is interested in understanding how to adapt the system to different fruits. The technology is already ready for commercial development, since the company has overcome the initial key difficulties.

Other robotic harvesting assistants

The StrawBot robot helps with a difficult task: harvesting strawberries. There have been many attempts to develop an autonomous berry-picking bot, but no company has perfected the process. Ag Pro Robotics created StrawBot to automate the task of collecting full containers of strawberries from workers and delivering them to collection points at the end of the row.

Such a robot saves farmers approximately 18-35% in labour costs. It also allows using 15-20% more land, which is a significant increase in planted area.

The Eve robot from Ripe Robotics is being prepared for industrial harvesting of apples, oranges and stone fruits. Eve checks the quality and ripeness of each fruit, then automatically picks it at the optimal time. Thanks to a soft suction tube, fruit is gently separated from the tree and not damaged.