Overview and application
The agriculture Industry has been slow in adopting technologies into their chores but it is slowly evolving. One of our clients was hired to look into the possibility of removing human labor hand-picking broccoli in the field, and replacing them with AI robotics that can be taught to identify and pick items off the field.
The advantages of such application are multi-faceted. This would take workers off the field where they would be subject to weather conditions, and the worker can also avoid injuries from grueling working conditions.
Utilizing Neousys edge AI platform, the robot can automate the harvest of fruits and vegetables. With AI, robotics and its advanced vision system, it can identify and locate fruits and vegetables ready for harvest. The system is customizable, the Neousys edge AI platform can be taught to adapted to your needs. It would be possible to inspect different fruits and vegetables, to classify them, to put them in boxes, to palletize the boxes and to pile them on a trailer.
By replacing worker and deploying smart machines into the field that can accurately recognize, cut and pick off broccoli, they can offer safety, increase efficiency and productivity.
Challenges
As with any other machine deployed into the field, they are subject to various weather conditions in the field. While the customer was able to sort out the external robotic component to endure environmental wear and tear, they had one obstacle that troubled their deployment, which was temperature. In their initial sample tests with another company’s computing platform, the temperature under the sun exceeded 50°C causing it to thermal throttle, resulting in performance degradation. The system overall was hampered by the throttling CPU, and was not returning the expected productivity and performance.
Solution
Sourcing from several vendors, they came across the Neousys edge AI platform that met their specifications for edge AI processing. While others had claim operating temperatures up to 50°C, it was the Neousys platform that offered true wide-temperature operation. Once installed and implemented, working under the same sunny conditions, the CPU did not throttle, thanks to Neousys’ unique thermal dissipation design. With a Neousys edge AI platform at the helm, the system in the field was returning increased productivity and was performing above par.
