Automating Packing Houses
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
This winter, it seemed like every ag conference was talking about artificial intelligence. However, where it will be most utilized on the farm remains to be seen. One application that is already gaining traction is in postharvest technology for fruits and vegetables. Wootzano founder Atif Syed says the need to take in various data points and make decisions quickly make the process well suited for artificial intelligence and robotics.
Syed… “ They collect or aggregate all the fruits and veg needed for this particular retailer, and then the retailer will give them 20 to 30 different specifications. It says ‘the grapes should be of this color and should be of that variety, and it should be, you know, all that sort of thing. It should look like this. It should be like that.’ Half of it is commercial and visual and marketing perspective, like all the grapes should look like this and stuff. The other one is obviously the taste and quality and everything else and, and health and safety factors. All of that needs to be done manually. So a person would do it manually and then they'll take a weight scale, put the grape on top of it, and then try to get the exact weight it needs, you keep it on the side, and then you put it out in a bag, in a clamshell. So a robotic system, that's exactly all of that. It's able to see the fruit in 300 millisecond. It knows the quality, the variety of the fruit. It knows all the specifications that talked about 2030 specification, what the retailer wants, and then processes it based on what is required, but then end customer packs it into whatever container it needs to be packed.
Syed’s company Wootzano rents out the equipment to packing houses at relative discounts to using human labor for the same tasks.
