The Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission has given the go-ahead to a California robotics company to begin developing a robotic apple harvester. When engineers at Vision Robotics Corporation in San Diego began developing a robotic fruit harvester for the citrus industry, they recognized that a similar harvester could work for harvesting other types of fruits. The machine will have two parts: a scout that moves through the grove or orchard first to produce a three-dimensional map showing the position and size of all the fruit on the trees, and a multi-armed harvester that will pick the fruit according to the […]