VISION ROBOTICS OF SAN DIEGO is close to completing its model orange-picking robot.  The machine with 8 picking arms can seek out the oranges, determine how far away they are and their readiness for picking, and pluck them carefully, depositing them safely in the collector bin.

Fred Reed of the Washington Times gives a good description of the robot’s workings HERE.   And Wired.com gives the story of the company designing the machine HERE.

Once the robot is perfected, it’s a simple step to make one for apples, grapes, cherries,etc.  It is basically a two-part machine.   One an eagle-eyed scout, the other a metallic octopus with a gentle touch. The first robot will scan the tree and build a 3-D map of the location and size of each orange, calculating the best order in which to pick them. It sends that information to the second robot, a harvester that will pick the tree clean, following a planned sequence that keeps its eight long arms from bumping into each other.

The prototype scout will be ready next year, with the harvester ready two or three years later.  The biggest hurdle is writing the software.  After the scout robot makes a 3-D map of the tree, it has to evaluate each piece of fruit. What size is the orange? What color is it? Does it have black spots on it?

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