Predictive Robotic Crop Transport for Picker Cart Servicing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Manual harvesting of crops like table grapes, cherry tomatoes, and strawberries is labor-intensive, with pickers spending significant time walking to and from collection points, thereby reducing productivity and increasing operational costs.
Innovation Solution
A robotic vehicle system that delivers empty containers to pickers and transports full containers to collection points, aided by instrumented picker carts and a field computer that predicts pickers' needs and schedules vehicle movements to optimize efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If pickers manually transport harvested crop to collection points, then labor flexibility is maintained, but productivity decreases due to significant walking time
Solution Approach 1:
A robotic vehicle is introduced as an intermediary between the picker and the collection point. The picker remains stationary or moves minimally, while the robot transports containers back and forth, eliminating the picker's walking time and increasing harvesting productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The transportation task is segmented from the harvesting task. The picker focuses solely on harvesting, while the robotic vehicle handles container transport separately. This division allows the picker to maximize harvesting time without interruption for walking to collection points.
2Productivity
If multiple robotic vehicles are deployed to service pickers, then picker productivity increases, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses feedback from instrumented picker carts that detect when containers are full and automatically request robotic vehicle service. This feedback mechanism coordinates multiple robots and pickers efficiently without requiring complex centralized control, as each element responds to simple status signals.
Solution Approach 2:
The picker cart system is self-servicing through automatic detection of full containers and automated requests for robotic assistance. This reduces the need for manual coordination and simplifies the overall system complexity while maintaining high productivity.
3Productivity
If robotic vehicles wait for containers to be fully loaded, then transport efficiency improves, but picker downtime increases
Solution Approach 1:
The robotic vehicle is dispatched to the picker before the container is completely full, based on predictive algorithms that estimate when the container will be full. This preliminary action allows the picker to continue harvesting without interruption while the robot prepares for immediate container exchange, minimizing picker downtime.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, apparatus and method are provided for robotically assisting the harvest of a crop. Instrumented picker carts include sensors for detecting amounts of harvested crop (e.g., fill ratios) of containers carried by the carts, communication modules for communicating their locations and detected crop amounts to a field computer, and components for signaling for robotic service. The field computer predicts when a cart that requests service will have a full container and where it will be located at that time, then decides whether to approve the request. If the request is approved, a robot is assigned and is given (or generates) a path to the cart's predicted location, and begins moving toward the location so as to arrive near (and preferably before) the predicted time. Robots include means for moving (e.g., wheels, motors, steering components, power sources), navigation modules, computing components for controlling their movement, and communication modules.