A strawberry-picking robot is going to work in KPU's Langley greenhouses
Kwantlen Polytechnic University has $540,000 from NSERC and Mitacs for a three-year study of an AI-guided strawberry-picking robot, tested first in its research greenhouses in Langley and then in a commercial greenhouse.
Strawberries are picked by hand, berry by berry, and on a lot of farms the hard part is finding enough hands. Kwantlen Polytechnic University wants to know how much of that a robot can take on, and the testing will happen in Langley.
KPU announced today that it has $540,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Mitacs for a three-year study. For the first two years, a picking robot called the Pixa will work in the research greenhouses of KPU’s Institute for Sustainable Horticulture in Langley. In year three it moves to a commercial greenhouse, which KPU hasn’t named.
What the robot does
The Pixa is built by Nupeak Robotics, a Burnaby company. It drives the rows on its own and picks with a soft gripper on a jointed arm, which matters with fruit that bruises if you look at it wrong. Its cameras also take pictures of the plants as it goes.
The study will test three things:
- How well it picks in real growing conditions, not a lab. “We’re interested in understanding how well these technologies perform under real growing conditions,” said Dr. Deborah Henderson, the institute’s director.
- Picking at night. KPU says harvesting at night could improve fruit quality and possibly extend shelf life.
- Spotting trouble early. Researchers want to see whether the robot’s camera data can catch pests and disease sooner than the usual weekly crop walk.
The lead is Dr. Li Ma, a research scientist at the institute and a faculty member in KPU’s School of Horticulture. Dr. Woo Soo Kim of Simon Fraser University is co-supervising a master’s student on the project. “Growers need their crop picked on time, gently and consistently,” said Anshul Porwal, Nupeak’s CEO and co-founder.
Why Langley is a good place to test it
The labour problem is real and measured: KPU points to the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council’s forecast of a chronic shortage of farm workers through 2030. It lands close to home here: the Township has nearly half of all the farms in Metro Vancouver, and it names berries and greenhouses among its niche farm sectors (our farm country guide has the numbers and sources).
KPU’s horticulture labs, greenhouses and nurseries are at its Langley campus on the Langley Bypass. The institute’s research page is at kpu.ca/science/ish.