M. Hanheide: Autonomous Robots supporting Soft-Fruit production

Marc Hanheide is a Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems in the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln, UK, co-leading the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems Research (L-CAS). He received the Diploma in computer science from Bielefeld University, Germany, in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree (Dr.-Ing.) also in computer science also from Bielefeld University in 2006. In 2001, he joined the Applied Informatics Group at the Technical Faculty of Bielefeld University. From 2006 to 2009 he held a position as a senior researcher in the Applied Computer Science Group. From 2009 until 2011, he was a research fellow at the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Marc Hanheide is a Principal Investigator in many national and international research projects, funded by H2020, EPSRC, InnovateUK, DFG, industry partners, and others. The STRANDS, ILIAD, RASberry, AgriForwwards CDT, Robot Highways, and NCNR projects are among the bigger projects he is involved with in a leading capacity. In all his work, he researches autonomous robots, human-robot interaction, interaction-enabling technologies, and system architectures.

Marc Hanheide specifically focuses on aspects of long-term robotic behaviour and human-robot interaction and adaptation. His work contributes to robotic applications in care, logistics, nuclear decommissioning, security, agriculture, museums, and general service robotics.

In the light of increasing labour shortages and commercial challenges, the UK’s soft fruit production sector is looking at robotics solutions to automate the entire crop harvesting process. In this talk I will share some recent advances to tackle both logistics and actual fruit picking challenges in strawberry production.

Results from two InnovateUK projects will be presented and the insights gained reflected upon. Technical aspects to be covered comprise robust navigation in a real farm environment, coordination of robots in a very constrained environment, and manipulation planning for actual picking operations.