Manual labour for vegetable harvesting has become the greatest current challenge for English growers, with the desperate shortage due to Covid-19, Brexit and an overall decreasing willingness to carry out hard physical field labour.
Their new category of field Muddy Machines Ltd was founded to address this issue by building robots that automate manual field work sustainably. A major English courgette grower, Barfoots of Botley, have requested MM turn their robotics skills to test the feasibility harvesting courgettes.
This collaborative project will test the feasibility of completely novel grippers, computer vision and software for the complex harvesting of courgettes on MM’s field-robust robot. They are also dedicated in the research to identify novel techniques and tools to innovate and ensure efficient farming, and uses 3D cameras combined with deep learning and a host of other sensors and algorithms to ensure best performance of their robots.
