The effects on labour are significant but not in the way most people believe.

Despite their benefits to productivity and efficiency in the past 25 years, automation and robotics are concepts that have been criticized for supposedly “dehumanizing” the workforce, primarily through job losses. Yet without their advances, the auto industry, food processing and medical science could not have evolved to their respective levels today. In fact, the very pace at which they progressed would have been affected significantly.

In agriculture, robotics has been a standard in the dairy sector, with milkers and feeders in an increasing number of operations across the country. In crop management, the DOT Power Platform was launched in 2018, allowing for autonomous seeding and spray applications, typically on larger tracts of land to maximize cost-efficiency, making them better-suited to Western Canada. Although robotic weeding machines have shown tremendous potential, their slower progress across a field favours adoption in smaller operations, usually in vegetable crops.

In horticulture production, there’s now the SortiPak system, developed by Dutch-based Crux Agribotics, a company founded by Richard Vialle and Alex Kind, the co-founders of KIND Technologies.

Much of the development in robotics, regardless of the application, has come from a push-pull of advances in technology and a retraction in the number of available workers. The demand for manual labour has continued its decline against an increased need for better crop monitoring, greater sensitivity for the preferences of consumers and the fact that wages have not kept pace with inflation and other economic challenges. At the same time, the science enabling further evolution in robotics is creating new possibilities while broadening the applicability of many of the designs coming to the market.

A long time developing

It’s this combination of effects that has highlighted the rise of the SortiPak system. Executives with the company acknowledge the benefits of automation technologies that preceded theirs in the auto industry, food processing and health care sectors. They’ve parlayed that 35-plus years of expertise into an eight- to nine-year record of success in monitoring, packaging and distribution of tomatoes, cucumbers and pointed sweet peppers.

“It’s becoming a necessity rather than a luxury in order to make sure that all of the quality aspects are met, all of the tracking and tracing aspects are met,” says Bjard Schoots, sales director, North America with Crux Agribotics. Roughly four years ago, they introduced their technologies to the North American market. “The robotics and the systems we implement do save on the necessity of labour but it’s still needed in the greenhouse and it’s hard to find people. No one thinks twice about robotics in automotive whereas people are hesitant in applying robotics in horticulture.”

As nice as it’d be to keep more people employed as pickers and sorters, the realities of rising costs are pinioned against increased demand, not just for produce, but the best-looking produce. As Schoots is quick to point out, the drive with robotics is to employ the systems where they make the most sense to automate with the goal of creating employment opportunities for servicing and maintaining the technology.

How it works

The SortiPak system combines vision technology and robotics. In its current form, the focus is on post-harvest processes. Three-dimensional vision technology and colour cameras are used to examine all aspects needed for a grower to classify or sort the produce into an optimal class.

“That can be first or second class or any way the grower or the user sets their parameters for the produce,” says Schoots. “That’s on size or length or colour, or for cucumbers, it’s on curvature. All of that’s implemented and we then allocate each fruit to a certain robot.”

With tomatoes, each robot can handle two boxes into which fruit will be placed, so with nine robots there’d be 18 boxes. Fifteen pounds is the goal weight for a box, whether there are 18, 22 or 25 tomatoes. Then they examine the tomatoes coming in and ensure the 18 or 22 tomatoes within that class fit together in a box and form exactly or very close to 15 pounds. That ensures giveaway weights are minimized and resulting revenue per square foot (or metre) from the greenhouse is improved.

“And because we’re not tipping or rolling or dumping anything, the damage is near zero,” says Schoots. “The way people are doing it now, there is a difference between the number of tomatoes that come out of the greenhouse and the amount that actually makes it to the factory.”

Without the blemishes or bruising resulting from dumping produce, they have a longer shelf life and look better, which helps sell the produce. It also lends itself to food safety, a component of production that’s becoming more of a factor in horticulture. With the SortiPak system, there’s only one person touching the produce after it comes off the plant. At that point, no human hands touch the product.

Other deciding factors

Asked if there’s a standard size or a threshold to justify the move to a robotic sorting and packing system, Schoots acknowledges there is a higher “up-front” investment required, but in the long run, it can be less expensive overall.

“It’s the mid-size to large growers that are considering it quicker than the smaller ones,” he adds. “For beefsteak tomatoes, it’s about 4 to 5 hectares (9.9 to 12.4 acres) where it starts to make sense, volume-wise. For cucumbers, we see it around 8 to 9 hectares (19.8 to 22.2 acres). And the more you use the line, the more volume you push through it and the quicker you have your investment back.”

There’s a lot to consider from a cost-efficiency perspective, including the number of shifts for use with a robotic unit. It’s about finding that balance between available labour, the effect on food safety and handling, and the amount of data that can be gathered. Schoots notes the parts that can be automated should be because that results in the cost-price remaining fair.

“The availability of data, tracking and tracing and food safety are hard concepts to make a definitive statement on value, yet it’s evolving every day,” he says.

For more information, visit the Crux Agribotics website at: https://cruxagribotics.com/