REPORT: An autonomous harvester being developed by a UK start up could solve labour shortages which threaten the crop.
Labour shortages are arguably the biggest single challenge for agriculture as a whole, but for the fresh produce sector the problem is so urgent that it
is threatening business viability. Asparagus is a clear example, with individual stems cut by hand at specific sizes and loaded manually into trays – and this labour intensive 70-day harvest formed a focus for Chris Chavasse, a former design engineer for Dyson’s industrial innovations, when he founded Muddy Machines.
“I wanted to explore how automation could help solve labour shortages, by designing a lightweight, battery-powered vehicle that used a camera system to work in the crop without damaging unripe stems, identify the ripe stems, harvest them using a picking arm and place them in trays,” he explains. This was the first-generation prototype, which was developed with relatively low levels of funding, but was a vital step to generating the investor confidence to expand the development team at Muddy Machines, as the business was named.
“In the second generation, we added a four wheel drive chassis with front pivot axle, and in the third, waterproofed the components so it could have its first season being trialled in the field.” In 2024, the fourth generation Sprout prototype began work at the Chinn family’s Cobrey Farms in Herefordshire with the final chassis design developed at Muddy Machines’ London headquarters.
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