June 15, 2018
Automation-intensive sectors such as the automotive industry are not the only ones to rely on robots. In more and more agricultural settings, automation systems are superseding strenuous manual labour. In Germany, cucumbers destined for pickle jars are harvested using “cucumber flyers” – farm vehicles with wing-like attachments. Seasonal workers lie on their stomachs on the wings and pluck the ripe cucumbers. This labour-intensive, energy-sapping type of manual harvesting is becoming increasingly uneconomical, especially since Germany introduced a minimum wage. Many of the country’s agricultural regions consequently face an uncertain future; cucumber farming has already begun relocating to Eastern Europe and India. There is thus an urgent need for improved harvesting technologies to maintain the economic viability of cucumber farming in Germany. Experts from Fraunhofer IPK in Berlin are studying the potential for automating cucumber harvests in the scope of the EU’s CATCH (Cucumber Gathering – Green Field Experiments) project. Project partners are the Leibniz Institute…