Naturipe Berry Growers has joined an impressive list of U.S. berry investors to support development of Harvest CROO Robotics.  More than 20 per cent of the American berry industry has invested in the technology which enters a new phase in November.

Improvements include harvest speed and the development of an autonomous mobile platform that will carry the robotic pickers through the field. After strawberries are picked, they will be transferred overhead to the platform level for inspecting and packing into consumer units by delta robots.

“We were at commercial speed, last March, at a rate of eight seconds to pick a plant,” says Bob Pitzer, cofounder and chief technology officer of Harvest CROO. “Now, by using embedded processors and a streamlined picking head design, we expect to easily cut that time in half.”

Harvest CROO is seeking to raise $3 million to build the next version, the Alpha unit, which will be a predecessor to a production model.

Source:  Harvest Croo Robotics news release