Growing tomatoes and cucumbers is back-breaking work. The vines are like something out of Jack and the Beanstalk. They grow an inch every day and need to be lowered every week, otherwise they would hit the greenhouse roof.
The work is dull, difficult and physically demanding. It involves lifting and unhooking the vine from a vertical trellis and re-hooking it, so it is more angled.
A medium-sized farm will typically employ five full-time workers for this task alone, and recruitment is a constant struggle.
Enter Louie, an autonomous AI-powered robot developed by Israeli startup arugga.com, who does the job instead. Louie works 16 hours a day, with no tea breaks, no holidays, no complaints.
Louie is the product of Israeli ingenuity. A "regular" robot could be taught to do the same work, but it would be much slower, and far more expensive.
"The specific way we implement the automation of vision and control algorithms means our robot is effective and affordable," said Iddo Geltner, the company's CEO.
Arugga AI Farming, based in Kfar Monash, central Israel, started with Polly, a robot that pollinates plants, as a cost-effective alternative to bumblebees.
It built on that success with Louie, who lowers tomato and cucumber vines, and now has plans to further automate greenhouse work.
"There are many, many labour-intensive tasks, but lifting and lowering is one of the hardest," said Geltner.
Louie is, admittedly, far slower than his human counterpart. You'd need two robots to replace each worker, but Louie pays for himself in under three years.
Louie was launched commercially last June and is now deployed by HarvestHouse, the largest greenhouse cooperative in the Netherlands.
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