AGRI-OPENCORE. Accelerated delivery of robotic crop harvesting systems for horticulture

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).