AREA-H: Accelerating Robotics and Embedding Autonomy in Horticulture

Horticulture is suffering a labour productivity crisis. A rise in farm gate prices for strawberries since 2010 of just 23% \[_Defra_\] versus minimum wage increases of 77% in the same period \[_HomeOffice_\] have squeezed growers' margins to the absolute limit. Meanwhile a lack of labour availability, with 44% of growers employing seasonal labourers reporting a shortfall \[_Defra-2021_\], has made the running of many farms at current scale impossible. There are only two possible answers to this twin labour threat of cost and availability: shrink the size of the industry dramatically, ceding the market to foreign competition, or develop and invest in the tools to massively boost labour productivity. AREA-H is squarely aimed at the latter.

The UK Food Strategy recognises that autonomous machines are providing an increasingly essential role within horticulture, with the transformative potential to solve the labour crisis, increase productivity, resilience and also decrease the environmental impact of farming. However, uptake of robotics by UK farms is low compared to other industrialised nations despite the sector facing many critical challenges (including labour availability, rising costs, and climate change pressures).

To enable the transition to autonomous fleets at scale, robust robot localisation and navigation is key for high confidence operations and low levels of supervision. Current tech focuses on semi-autonomous navigation systems for high-cost large-scale equipment that are not operational in the unique mixed environment of horticulture - where polytunnels/greenhouses interfere with signals (such as GPS) and where high levels of human density are present - therefore horticulture-specific solutions are needed.

The project Accelerating Robotics and Embedding Autonomy in Horticulture (AREA-H) has assembled a world-class collaboration between technology leaders bringing expertise in robotic harvesting, AI and embedded controls, horticulture growing systems and state-of-the-art autonomous-operation research - necessary to realise the transformative impact of robotics to UK horticulture growers.