Adev S-2 Albien
The Adev S-2 Albien is our operational prototype that can find, track, reach, and pick ripe strawberries.
This system has been designed using primarily commercially available equipment with the goal of reducing costs and maximizing manufacturability. This will be a system that can easily be produced in numbers that can have a real impact on improving the predictability of farm labor. Adev harvesters are evaluated based on 5 primary metrics that have been compiled and reviewed by industry experts and farmers to ensure a safe, and cost effective alternative to labor. These metrics enable make it easy to establish milestones and determine when a system is ready for the field and how cost effective it can harvest strawberries.
Adev Automation has been working with Trellis Growing Systems Inc to cooperatively building an end to end hops harvesting system
The Adev Hops Harvester Platform
The Adev Hop Stripper Prototype (patent pending)
The Adev S-2 Albien
Adev Hops Harvester - New Prototype
If you would like to hear more about us and how we can add value and efficiency to your harvest operation, feel free to contact us!
Metric 1: % of all ripe strawberries detected -
Multiples tracking cameras are used to find ripe strawberries during the harvesting process, this metric evaluate detection system performance, we cannot pick berries that we cannot find
Metric 2: % of all ripe strawberries picked -
Our mechanical harvesting arm is designed to be able to pick any strawberry within its reach, even those that are clumped together, but no system is perfect. Our goal is to compete with human harvesters which have been found to harvest about 75% of all strawberries in a field on average.
Metric 3: % of all strawberries that are damaged by the harvester -
Our system is designed to avoid damaging strawberries but still pick rapidly and effectively, some damage is acceptable but only a very low level
Metric 4: % of berries picked before ripening (too early) -
Adev Engineers strive to accurately identify only ripe berries to avoid early harvest of unripe berries which is similar in affect to damaging the berry
Metric 5: Ripe and Undamaged Berries picked per minute
This is our major metric which will determine the cost effectiveness of the system, increasing harvest speed reduces the number of harvesters needed and drives down overall costs.
Adev Performance Metrics
Photos from our Jan 2022 Field Test
Initial Functionality test video in Fall 2021
May 2022 Enhancement evaluation Reduced time to pick a strawberry by over 50% an average of 25 seconds. Increased pick area to include the entire strawberry bed. These improvements are a major step towards meeting production requirements. Several aspects of the arm and the rover were improved resulting in significantly improved speed and precision. Wheels were enlarged from 10in to 18in wheels. Primary servo was replaced with a higher precision and higher torque system and most importantly the kinematics, and feedback algorithms were improved to significantly improve speed and the pick percentage rate. All improvements are focused on improving the specific set of metrics described immediately under the video in the Metics section.
