June 2019 - 16

CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT
Mechanized cucumber harvesting, packing emerges
By Stephen Kloosterman
Associate Editor
A Dutch robotics firm says its machine
could be automatically harvesting
greenhouse cucumbers in a few years.
Harvests for greenhouse cucumbers
A prototype robot from Crux Agribotics uses three-dimensional and twodimensional
sight to find cucumbers in a greenhouse setting. Photos: Crux
Agribotics/One of A Kind Technologies
can run nine months to year-round
with artificial light, said Richard
Vialle, CCO and co-founder or One
of A Kind Technologies. While the
crop harvests can run around the year,
an automated harvest could be more
efficient and hygienic than traditional
labor-intensive processes.
The prototype robot uses sensors to
detect cucumbers hanging from a highwire
greenhouse system and harvests
them with a knife that is heated to reduce
the transference of disease.
Vialle's business group, which is
marketing the technology under the
Crux Agribotics brand, had a lot of
interest from greenhouse cucumber
growers after attending Fruit Logistica
last February in Berlin. One of A
Kind Technologies and its robotics
brand Beltech have also developed an
automated packing line for cucumbers
and other vegetables.
Vialle said a harvesting robot is being
developed to fit into " brownfield, " or
existing
greenhouse
operations.
Growers
looking to
make their
greenhouses
robotic would
High-Tech Tools
2019
be making a big leap. Beyond investing in
the expensive technology, they would want
to convert their operations from being
open eight-10 hours per day to round-theclock
with less staff.
" We have to prove the solution, "
Vialle wrote in an email. " The harvesting
robots will still take two-three years to be
launched to the market broadly. For the
coming years, we will help the growers
get used to automation that is more
consistent, hygienic and less dependent on
humans (which are becoming scarce, not
consistent, costly and introduce viruses
into the greenhouse environment). "
If not ready for commercial launch, the
harvesting robot has proven the concept
is possible.
" The prototype was built to prove, to
ourselves and the value chain involved,
that it is fundamentally possible to
detect cucumbers, and the crops
(leaves, branches) to subsequently
classify the cucumbers to harvest only
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June 2019

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