Farmers hit by a shortage of migrant workers after Brexit could use ROBOT harvesters instead
A team at Plymouth University is working on a three-year trial of a two-armed device with cameras to pick crops
FARMERS hit by a shortage of migrant workers after Brexit could turn to robot harvesters instead.
A three-year trial is using a two-armed device with cameras that let it recognise which parts of crops to collect and which to leave.
The £10million cost has been met by cauliflower and cabbage growers, tech firms — and an EU grant.
But Dr Stoelen, robotics lecturer at Plymouth University and the man heading the project, believes he has come up with the solution to any future migrant shortages.
He said: "A lot of producers are very worried about where they will get their reasonably priced manual labour from - and rightly so.
"Manual harvesting also represents a large portion of their total costs.
"Often it can be up to 50 per cent so looking at addressing that, especially against a backdrop of Brexit, is very important."
With support from the Agri-tech Cornwall Project (ACP) - Dr Stoelen has already been designing, building and testing a rig under field conditions and hopes to bring the product to the market within two to three years.
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It is building on the successes of his GummiArm robot, which has two arms and, in many ways, moves more like a human than a machine.
The new robot was designed to be a 'little helper' which can pick vegetable from the fields in the same way humans do.