Harvest Automation
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- Offer Profile
- Harvest Automation has
released the first practical, scalable robots for a range of Agricultural
applications. Addressing labor scarcity issues, Harvest enables growers to
create a sustainable workforce of robots working safely alongside people to
increase efficiency, reliability and plant quality.
Harvest’s robots can perform as much manual labor as required by each grower, creating more capacity for human workers to focus on other tasks. The robots can also increase plant quality by optimizing plant placement in the fields and reduce non-labor production costs including the use of water, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Harvest Automation is headquartered outside of Boston, Mass.
Product Portfolio
Tough, Smart Simple Robots
Harvest Automation's flagship
- Harvest Automation's flagship product is designed to
perform material handling tasks in unstructured, outdoor environments such
as those typically found in commercial growing operations. The robots work
safely alongside humans and require minimal training to operate, while
vastly reducing production costs and improving productivity. They will
reduce direct labor headcount and costs while enabling efficiency
initiatives such as resource management, just in time production, and
inventory control. The principal features and functions offered in the first
product release include:
Features:- effective in greenhouse, hoop house and nursery environments
- high placement accuracy
- handles most common container sizes
- quick swap rechargeable battery
- minimal training and setup
- no programming required
- all weather 24 hour operation
- spacing
- re-spacing
- collection
- consolidation
TECHNOLOGY
- Harvest has developed a new approach to automating a
variety of traditionally manual labor tasks based on mobile robot
technology. Teams of small, highly intelligent machines work safely with
laborers to perform the most physically demanding parts of these tasks, and
at a significantly reduced cost.
Behavior-based Robotics
Our intelligent, behavior-based approach to automation provides a scalable and robust system architecture for robots that enables them to operate in even the most challenging environments. Harvest's highly adaptable, behavior-based platform responds immediately to changes in the work environment, intelligently accounts for imperfect sensory data, and requires little setup and no programming.
Proprietary Sensor Technology
Harvest's robots incorporate simple, highly reliable local sensing technologies that do not depend on a global model of their environment. This translates into:- operation not constrained by GPS coverage
- wide variety of terrain operation
- ability to adapt to local conditions
Careful engineering and attention to our customers needs in the development stage has produced a versatile, rugged solution designed to work hard in real world environments. Our approach has produced the optimal result for our customers by providing equipment that is:- flexible and scalable
- fault tolerant
- inherently safe for operation near people
- easy and intuitive to set up and operate
ORNAMENTAL HORTICULTURE
- Harvest Automation has identified the US Nursery &
Greenhouse sector of the Agriculture industry as our initial market because
of the high number of manual laborers required and their significant issues
around labor availability and productivity. The U.S. Nursery and Greenhouse
industry produces approximately $17B of ornamental horticulture products per
year selling to retailers (e.g. Home Depot, Walmart, independent garden
centers) as well as large landscapers, municipalities, and resellers. The
production of ornamental plants requires vast amounts of manual labor with
labor accounting for over 30% of production costs.
Harvest conducted in-depth research to clearly identify the breadth of strategic challenges facing the Nursery & Greenhouse industry. These challenges are centered on the industry's ongoing need to reduce production costs and successfully resolve related labor issues associated with container handling. Using Harvest's products will drive significant operational improvements in the following areas:
Benefit Reduces Cost Reduces Risk Increases
Quality50% unit handling cost reduction ✓ Improve long-term cost visibility ✓ Less susceptible to worker availability ✓ ✓ Better immigration compliance ✓ ✓ Improved worker safety/health ✓ ✓ Less susceptible to labor law changes ✓ ✓ Less susceptible to healthcare changes ✓ ✓ More container handling flexibility ✓ ✓ Efficient water, pesticide, herbicide usage ✓ ✓