Artificial intelligence (AI) has been revolutionizing the world on many different industries and in several different ways. Among the sectors that have been benefitting from the innovations and advancements of AI, is the agricultural world. Recently published reviews highlight the importance of AI and different robotic technologies in making every step of farming more precise and efficient. AI can be applied in the stages of cultivation, harvesting, sorting and more1.
The use of these advanced technologies allows farmers to manage their crops in a more strategic and efficient way, as they are able to make crucial decisions on crop types, timing and growing conditions, with better disease prevention, as well as sorting the best quality products2. With the use of advanced imaging and 3D technologies, farmers are able to collect data on the crops and on each and every fruit and vegetable produced3.
The advantages of different AI technologies can also be seen in the post-harvest stages. With the development of automated agricultural systems, it is now possible to detect defects and perform efficient fruit sorting as well as transportation4.
Sorting of fruits has high labor costs and includes a variety of aspects that need to be analyzed on the fruit, including ripeness, diseases, injury and decay. In order to test all of these aspects and send out the best products to the market, it is necessary to conduct precise and efficient analyses. Thanks to the development of robots and automated machines, using advanced imaging, it is possible to provide an integrated system which is able to test, sort and pack the products4.
Eshet Eilon, a leading agricultural equipment developer, offers a wide range of sorting systems. With the use of optical sensors and advanced imaging, Eshet Eilon’s machines collect and integrate data on different qualities of the product, including shape, color, texture, defects and more. These data are translated into a well-developed sorting system according to the predefined and needed qualities of the fruit or vegetable.
Eshet Eilon also offers an advanced quality control checkpoint system using a mix of hyper-spectral and RGB cameras. The system handles more than 50 different fruits and vegetables, and provides accurate external and internal quality ratings for every shipment that arrives to the logistics center.
With near infrared sensors the analyses performed on the products go deep into the inner layers of the fruit and can therefore lead to sorting based on a deep analysis of the product’s quality. With the use of advanced robotic dispatchers, products can be sorted and packed in boxes based on predefined arrangements.
In the photo: Illustration by AI software, showing a packinghouse based on AI technologies
References
1 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667318523000016
2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277323712200020X
3 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/734711/EPRS_STU(2023)734711_EN.pdf
4 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1082860/full
