As the Florida strawberry season concludes, Harvest CROO announced that its automated harvest field trials have successfully demonstrated commercial viability.
Having reached performance rates on par with human harvesting in a commercial picking operation, this achievement represents a major milestone for the company and the future of American agriculture, according to a news release.
Harvest CROO was initially founded to alleviate labor shortages, the company said, adding that the machine in its current iteration has unlocked worlds of new possibilities by converging artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning, innovative food safety technology and advanced breeding techniques.
“We are at the cutting edge of a new AI agricultural revolution, and this technology is ready to scale,” said Gary Wishnatzki, co-founder and owner of Wish Farms. “Strawberries are picked the same way they were over 100 years ago. Harvest CROO is primed to disrupt the multibillion-dollar U.S. strawberry market. The benefits are game changing for strawberries, but its transferability to other specialty crops as well as other industries is very promising.”
Processing power experienced a major leap forward in just the past year. With the use of the latest generation of NVIDIA chips, the platform’s vision processing capability is now a staggering 200 times more powerful. This exponential jump, bundled with Harvest CROO’s 13 patents, AI and advanced robotic technology, has allowed them to attain harvesting on par with humans, the release said.
Farmers, investors and others were on hand to witness a recent field trial, the release said. Among them was Jorge Heraud, co-founder of Blue River Technology, and past vice president of autonomy and automation at John Deere.
“This machine is a technological wonder,” Heraud said. “It is complex, yet productive and efficient. I was extremely impressed by the integration of different technologies. It is a shining example of where robotics in farming is headed.”
Besides providing surety of harvest with the lowest landed cost to growers, the company says the platform has a host of other benefits that bring with it radically improved outcomes for the nation’s economy and food supply. Among other advantages, the machine employs deep data analytic elements that eliminate pathogens, increase yield, improve quality and extend shelf life. This will ultimately make healthy produce more affordable and widely available to the public, the release said.
The machine and its technology are developed and manufactured in America. By onshoring this tech, the U.S. will benefit by having a self-sufficient labor force that will provide better, higher paying jobs at the farms. It will also greatly reduce growers’ dependence on guest workers, facilitating a food supply independent of foreign nations, the release said.
“We started as strawberry picking company, but now we have evolved into an AI machine learning and robotics driven technology company that will enable the transformation of industries far beyond agriculture. The market potential is virtually limitless,” said Joe McGee, CEO for Harvest CROO. “Our proprietary tech has already demonstrated its effectiveness by picking the most complicated crop in agriculture. Now, everything else will just be an engineering problem.”
