Trials begin on next generation of strawberry-picking robots

The next generation of strawberry-picking robots are being trialled on a farm in Essex in an attempt to solve labour shortages across the agricultural industry.

The University of Essex’s Dr Vishwanathan Mohan is leading the £1m project, funded by the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, which has seen trials take place on Wilkin and Sons' vertical strawberry farm down in Tiptree.

A new, smaller version of the original robot prototype used in 2024 is now being tested, with plans also in place for a third robot to be trialled this summer.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the robots can identify ripe strawberries, pick them and then package them in a matter of seconds.

Dr Mohan said: “The focus has always been on speed, precision, and the cost to build commercially viable product.

“This season we will for the first time being trialling a second and third generations of robots.

“At the same time, we plan to deploy the robots to harvest other crop types and labour-intensive tasks to demonstrate their versatility.”

The second-generation robot is built at a fifth of the cost - around £20,000 - of the first-generation trialled last summer in Tiptree.

Dr Mohan, of Essex's School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, says this new prototype has managed to retain the same performance levels while reusing ‘vision-action-decision making’ software used in the original.

The overall aim is to build five strawberry-picking robots by 2027, with each new prototype smaller and less expensive.

Dr Mohan added: “The ambition is to bring the cost of an outdoor rover for AgriTech applications to the same price as a laptop.

“We want to make cutting-edge agri-robotics accessible to everyone around the world.”

The research has also led to the creation of AgriTech spinout company Versatile RobotX, co-founded by Dr Mohan.

University spin-outs allow academics to commercialise their research when transferred into real-world settings.