Where the development of picking robots is concerned, we especially look at what is going on in, for instance, the United States and New Zealand. However, in the Netherlands too, work is being done on the development of robot technology for picking fruit. Among others, Dutch firm Munckhof Fruit Tech Innovators is involved in this. In 2020, the company started building and testing a robot arm. Over the years, various suction heads have been tested. The latest type is a suction head with two air chambers. The apple or pear is secured by a suction of 6 kg and picked with a turning movement.
Munckhof Fruit Tech Innovators uses its own Pluk-o-Trak to transport fruits picked with the robot arm. The robot arm puts the apples on a picking belt, after which the fruits end up in the big bin via the bin filler. At the same time with the robot arm, people can also work on the same Pluk-o-Trak-machine. The people can be replaced by supplying each of the six picking belts with a robot picking arm.
In 2024, the robot picking arm in combination with the Pluk-o-Trak was tested in the orchard of Proeftuin Randwijk in the Netherlands. Via https://youtu.be/V8OlkzJSAe8 the 1-minute video of the picking robot can be viewed.
