British fruit and vegetable growers are leaving crops unpicked because they cannot find enough seasonal workers. The UK horticulture sector faces a severe labour shortage driven by Brexit, COVID, the war in Ukraine, and changing population demographics—so severe that the NFU president called the resulting food waste an “absolute crisis.” Current robotic harvesters can pick only 2 kilograms of strawberries per hour, far below the 30 kilograms per hour needed to match human costs. AGRI-OPENCORE aims to solve this by creating the world’s first open development platform for agricultural robotics. Instead of each company building a picking system from scratch for every crop, the project will provide shared core software and hardware interfaces that any robotics firm can use and then build upon privately—much like smartphone apps run on a common operating system. The team will demonstrate the approach by developing commercial robotic harvesters for tomatoes and strawberries that achieve human-cost-parity within two years. If successful, the platform could cut development time for new harvesting robots by more than two years, transform labour productivity, reduce food waste, and make UK horticulture more resilient to future labour shocks.
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It is well accepted that due to Brexit, COVID, Ukraine and population demographics, the UK horticulture sector is heavily constrained by a lack of seasonal harvest labour. This year as crops have gone unpicked, NFU President Minette Batters stated that the sector was in an "absolute" food waste "crisis". DEFRA is working with industry to mitigate impacts. Evidenced through a multi stakeholder automation review cochaired by SoS Eustice, the recent Food Strategy White Paper (June 2022) called for a permanent solution to the labour constraint; transformation of labour productivity through the development and adoption of advanced robotics systems. Whilst globally no robotic system has yet reached human picking cost parity, the best systems in strawberry pick 2kg/h v target of 30kg/h, there is progress, not least by UK based SME's. The remaining key challenges for scaled adoption are; 1\. Higher speed picking to achieve human cost parity 2\. Evidence of trusted, assured and safe operation 3\. Integration of robotics with farm infrastructure and human resources However, as horticulture has high production diversity, the cost of developing robotics for commercial use across many different crops and systems is significant. Furthermore robot integration requires highly diverse skills, not-always available in start-up companies. AGRI-OPENCORE is a bold initiative to resolve these issues and focussed to \[1\] cut the time and cost to develop a robotic harvesting system for any farm/crop with human-cost-picking-parity performance \[2\] leave a legacy to accelerate development of any agri-robotic system for all crops AGRI-OPENCORE delivers these objectives through \[1\] unprecedented cross sector collaboration (APSSalads, BerryGardens, ClockHouseFarm, HughLoweFarm, UniversityofLincoln, Saga, Dogtooth, Xihelm, Wootzano), \[2\] creation of an open ecosystem for innovation, \[3\] scaled cocreation and demonstration of technologies on English farms. To deliver these objectives, AGRI-OPENCORE will create the world's first open development platform (software and hardware) for agri-robotic crop harvesting. AGRI-OPENCORE provides open access to core software and interfaces that are hitherto unavailable to SME's, but when adopted can be privately exploited by robotics companies (aka smartphone apps). We will demonstrate the principle by developing commercial robotic systems for tomato and strawberry harvesting that achieve human-picking-cost-parity in 2 years. AGRI-OPENCORE's open ecosystem creates an enduring legacy available for any robotic company / farming system. It accelerates robotic picking adoption (by \> 2 years), step changes labour productivity, secures an economic and environmentally efficient farming system (reduced waste/import substitution) that is resilient to shocks (labour availability).
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