A skilled human can pick a head of lettuce every 10 seconds. Just reach down, slice a mature head off its stalk, bag it, toss it in the cart. Easy, right?
Tell that to wannabe veggie-picking robots. For them, it’s actually quite a challenge.
Earlier this week, a team from the University of Cambridge published their latest robotic veggie-picking platform: Vegebot. The study appears in the Journal of Field Robotics. The good news is, it picks lettuce. The bad news is, it’s not nearly as fast or efficient as a human.