A Belgian engineering company tried to digitize the way we harvested produce, one strawberry at a time. Heverlee-based startup OcTInion recently developed a strawberry picking robot with machine vision and 3D printing "hands". Its advanced computer vision system can determine when strawberries are ripe and ready to be harvested, all of which are similar to human workers.
OcTInion CEO Tom Coen believes the machine will be the future of strawberry picking, replacing migrant workers in California and other large berry growing areas. Cohen said: "The agricultural workforce is unsustainable at this point, because labor must go through thousands of kilometers to complete the work."
Today, this is a controversial topic because the Trump administration continues to target the newcomer community in the United States, many of whom work in agriculture. Large-scale strawberry farms in California are particularly important for these communities, providing a major source of income for migrant workers and their families.
However, in the past two decades, the industry has become increasingly difficult to maintain. According to recent reports, the number of fieldworkers in California has shrunk by nearly 40% since 2002, and economists believe that it is mainly to tighten immigration policies and strengthen the Mexican economy. The labor crisis is real. But for those who stay in the fields, their labor is being given new value. Fewer workers mean competitive wages and other benefits, such as health insurance, childcare, and even a piece of land.
Replacing farmers with robotic strawberry picking institutions will inevitably end these opportunities and sacrifice the livelihoods of thousands of migrant workers. However, for farmers, in order to maintain their livelihood, farmers have almost no room for manoeuvre in reducing costs. Like OcTInion's robots, machine labor is increasingly proposing a viable solution that is increasingly difficult to ignore.
Cohen talked about robots compared to human strawberry pickers, "but we are already economically profitable because the cost of each berry is similar." Although the machine is not as good as human workers, Cohen believes his robot has other The advantages. OcTInion's website claims that the picking speed, picking quality and sorting quality of the machine are comparable to skilled human picking tools, but the robotic strawberry picker provides advanced quality monitoring for sorting, crop monitoring and precision farming.
The robot is mounted on an autonomous platform called Dribble, which uses beacons to navigate around the greenhouse without requiring structural changes to the facility.
A patented soft tentacles grabs strawberries without damaging the fruit, and the 3D printing arm picks a strawberry picker every 3 seconds. All in all, the machine picks all the ripe strawberries at the same speed as human workers. Regardless of whether farmers choose to hand over the fields to machine labor, it remains to be seen - the robotic strawberry picking robot is still in the experimental phase - but Cohen is still optimistic that this is already an unstoppable trend, good or bad.
Octinion will begin pilot testing with strawberry farmers in 2018 and is preparing for the commercial launch of the 2019 harvester. The company is already looking to expand the use of robots to grow vegetables in greenhouses such as peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.
Rectangular I/O Connectors
Antenk offers an expansive product line of I/O connectors including USB, HDMI, D-Sub, Modular Jacks, SFP, QSFP+, CXP, iPass+, iPass+ HD and more. In addition to standard I/O connectors and matching cable assemblies.Except a comprehensive range of standard Input/Output connector solutions for high-speed electronic data communication, Antenk engineers can design customized solutions. This extensive selection of I/O connectors and matching cable assemblies includes numerous next-generation solutions.All of our I/O connectors feature a variety of orientation options, as well as PCB and cable mount offerings.
Antenk develop and specify high-performance I/O's throughout a wide variety of industries. These include SAS, SATA, PCIe, HSSG, FIBRE CHANNEL, INFINIBAND, IEC, CEA, IEEE, VESA, USB and many more.
I/O Connectors Application
Consumer / PC Products
Networking / Telecommunications Products
Mobile Products
Industrial Products
Antenk can deliver standard and custom options of the following I/O connectors:
1394 Connector
Centronic Connector
D-Sub Connector
DVI Connector
Display Port Connector
HDMI Connector
Half Pitch SCSI Connectors
USB Connector
V.35 Connector
OBD Connector
I/O Connectors General Specifications
ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Contact Current Rating:5Amperes.
Dielectric Withstanding.
Dielectric Withstanding Voltage:AC 1000Vr.m.s.
Insulation Resistance:500 Megohms Minimum at DC500V.
Contact Resistance:25 Milliohms Maximum.
Operating Temperature:-55℃~105℃.
MATERIALS:
Contacts:Brass.
Insulator:PBT,UL94V-O Rated.
Shell:Cold Rolle Steel.
Metal Watertight Frame:PBT,UL94V-0.
O-Ring:Silicone.
NOTE:
Position:09PIN,15PIN,25PIN,37PIN.
Rectangular Connector,Rectangular I Connectors,Rectangular O Connectors,Male Connector Rectangular,I/O Connectors,Input/Output Connectors
ShenZhen Antenk Electronics Co,Ltd , https://www.antenkwire.com