A company in Kurume City has developed a robot that uses AI (artificial intelligence) to harvest strawberries automatically. The box-shaped robot is on wheels, and it automatically runs inside a greenhouse. Utilizing a camera and AI, it picks out strawberries that are ready to be harvested from its images, and an arm pinches off the tips of the stems and gathers them into trays. The Kurume-based manufacturer has been developing this system for the past four years with support from the city of Kurume. The completed prototype was unveiled on May 17 in the town of Hirokawa. Officials hope that this robot will help growers facing a shortage of workers. The prototype robot currently takes about one minute to harvest one strawberry, but further improvements are planned to shorten the time to 10 seconds per strawberry. Source: NHK
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