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In the photo, it looks like it is picking plum or cherry tomatoes. Is it able to harvest heirloom varieties without damage? Will this make it possible to have
by JoeDaDude 7y ago
In the photo, it looks like it is picking plum or cherry tomatoes. Is it able to harvest heirloom varieties without damage? Will this make it possible to have better tasting tomatoes at your local store?
- fgkramer 7y agoI'm actually interested in how would this actually provide better testing tomatoes. Are you suggesting it will lower the harvesting cost of tastier varieties and therefore they will make their way to your local store?
- foxyv 7y agoI think the idea is that we could see a price drop in easily bruised but tastier varieties.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoWhat about transportation? I always thoughts they use these horrible rock hard tomatoes because they don't get damaged during transportation, I never really thought about picking. I was slaving 14 hour days a lot of summers picking strawberries in a foreign country and I can't recall we ever talked about the damaged during picking. The main thing was to keep the damaged ones away by either throwing or by eating them.
- pawelmurias 7y agoAre the hard crapatoes even easier to harvest?
- JoeDaDude 7y agoThere is a story that grocery store tomatoes were bred to withstand a 13 mph impact into the truck from a harvesting machine, but lost a lot of flavor. If this picker robot can gently pick heirloom tomatoes and place them into containers without damage, I speculate that consumers would prefer the better tasting tomato.
- mc32 7y agoI think their solution works pretty well: the “hand” is both a plucker and basket. Plucking means minimal squeezing; it pulls and rotates to pluck, then rather than trying to grasp the produce (fruit (or berry in some minds)) it cradles it in a recessed basket which is like a 360 “palm”. Obvs they can adjust the basket size and shape for diff crop types.