This is Tevel FAR, a collector drone that you can watch in action

After the outbreak of the pandemic and the closure of the borders, it found that the shortage of seasonal blue collar workers had grown significantly. It was like water to the mill in terms of the development of automated systems to fill these gaps in the market, and the Tevel Aerobotics FAR drone collector is a great example of this.

The collector drone by Tevel Aerobotics is only part of the FAR system, which is to fill the staff gaps

According to the Israeli startup Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, there is a serious shortage of workers to pick fruit in orchards, which the statistics confirm. Therefore, the company has developed an alternative to them, taking the form of robotic flying drones that do the job and stand out in the market, as we have usually seen large platforms with robotic arms in orchards.

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The FAR system owes its name to the acronym of Flying Autonomous Robots and its distribution is to be carried out in the form of borrowing for harvest periods. The system is not yet available for commercial use, but is rumored to be used later this year in pilot projects in apple orchards in Spain, the US and Italy.

It includes a wheeled vehicle that moves in the orchard together with four quadcopter drones that are directly connected to the vehicle as their power source.

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By using built-in cameras and computer vision algorithms based on artificial intelligence, drones are able to distinguish between individual fruits and other objects. They also assess the size and degree of maturity of each fruit, and plan a collision-free flight path in the direction of those considered suitable for harvesting. For this they use their integrated arm, which allows you to pick the fruit from the branch and return it to the base vehicle.