The harvester has four suction tubes for each worker to use. Fruit travels up the tube to an electronic scanner on the platform. Packable fruit and culls go into separate bins. After testing prototypes of their apple-harvesting system in Washington State in 2009, Picker Technologies and Oxbo are fine-tuning the technology. They plan to field test the next-generation harvester this spring with the hope of bringing it to market soon. Picker Technologies LLC of Mercer Island, Washington, and Oxbo International Corporation of Clear Lake, Wisconsin, formed a partnership two years ago to develop and commercialize fruit harvesting, scanning, and sorting […]