Isaac Mazor, founder and CEO of Israel-based Nanovel Ltd., says the company expects to launch its beta version of an autonomous tree fruit harvester in 2023 for the citrus market.
Mazor is described in a news release as a successful serial entrepreneur in the field of semiconductors and has leveraged his experience to develop a tree fruit harvester.
The company, according to the release, has been self-funded and operating in “stealth” mode since established in 2018. Nanovel’s proprietary solution combines artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning and proprietary robotics technologies, to enable autonomous tree fruit harvesting to become more productive, reliable and cost effective than hand harvesting, the release said.
The company has developed needed technologies, proof of concept and secured intellectual property, the release said, in addition to conducting field testing and customer demonstrations of its robotic harvester.
“Farm labor shortage is one of the main challenges we are facing today,” Tal Fogelman, a California grower and business development adviser to Nanovel, said in the release. “Nanovel’s solution will be serving a multibillion-dollar market that is currently relying on the traditional method of manual picking.”
The release said Nanovel Autonomous Tree Fruit Harvester will give multiple benefits to growers:
- Deep foliage real-time ‘Find and Pick’ capability is enabled by edge vision and computing.
- Supports gripping and trimming using proprietary technology suitable for a wide variety of fruit types: citrus, stone fruit, avocado, mango and more.
- Reliable harvest scheduling.
- Valuable insights of yield and quality by big data collection and analysis.
- Cost-competitive compared to traditional manual picking.
