The RASberry funding programme (Robotics and Autonomous Systems for Berry Production) aims to develop autonomous fleets of robots for the horticultural industry.
The first major objective is to support in-field transportation operations to aid and complement human fruit pickers, followed by other objectives on applications such as plant treatment, yield forecasting and fruit picking. To achieve this goal, the project bridges several current technological gaps including the development of a mobile platform suitable for strawberry fields, software components for fleet management, in-field navigation and mapping, fruit perception and dexterous picking, long-term operation, and safe human-robot collaboration.
RASberry is a collaboration between academia, the robotics industry, and strawberry growers to cover multidisciplinary competencies required for successful delivery of the project.