Brisbane-based Universal Field Robots has developed technology to help pick avocados

The Universal Field Robots team had a fantastic time exhibiting at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) last week from Monday 21 – Friday 25 May 2018 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Whilst there, Courier Mail Business Journalist Stephanie Bennett interviewed UFR Managing Director Jeff Sterling and watched a live autonomous demonstration of both the excavator and  KUKA robotic picking arm in action.

Read her article about how Universal Field Robots, founded by engineer Jeff Sterling, is busy developing outdoor robotic machinery with the potential to shake up the long-standing agricultural industry in the The Courier-Mail.

“We did some strategic looking ahead at what might be happening after the mining downturn, and worked out that robotics was going to be an emerging business,” he said. “We decided to put our focus into developing a robotic product that can be useful on the land, and one of the first areas we researched into was avocado picking.”

It led to the development of an autonomous robotic avocado picker, which can attach to the company’s three-tonne robotic Caterpillar excavator.

Not only can does the avocado picker have the capability to identify whether fruit is ripe for picking, the equipment operates at a similar speed to manual picking, but with the potential to operate 24/7 and without the added labour costs or dangers.

Don’t have access to the Courier Mail online? Read the article here.